Do researchers get paid less than the clinicians?

[Bookmark311]

I was talking to a mentor in internal medicine and he told me that doctors who do research are less paid than ones that do clinical work. Is that true ?

[BigM]

Yes.  In general, the more you do research or teaching instead of seeing patients, the less you will make.  It's not an absolute as some people pull in big pharma $$$ but it's a general rule for most situations.

[ChemPetE]

More often than not. But depends on the specialty and province and funding arrangement, of which there are many in this day and age. In general it’s ‘easier’ to game the ffs system, which can’t be said as much for academia.

[NLengr]

2 hours ago, ChemPetE said:

More often than not. But depends on the specialty and province and funding arrangement, of which there are many in this day and age. In general it’s ‘easier’ to game the ffs system, which can’t be said as much for academia.

Lots of academics are ffs too.

The difference comes down to the fact if you are researching or teaching you can't see as many patients per week or perform as many procedures per OR day. You also tend to see more complex cases (which take longer to see) because you are in a tertiary care center. 

[LostLamb]

yes.

however, let's face it, they are still making decent money....several hundreds of thousands of dollars--I will hazard most are between 200-350K. It is no pittance.

[NLengr]

1 hour ago, LostLamb said:

yes.

however, let's face it, they are still making decent money....several hundreds of thousands of dollars--I will hazard most are between 200-350K. It is no pittance.

Plus they have slaves (wait....residents and fellows) to make their clinical work and call much easier.

[ZBL]

6 hours ago, Bookmark311 said:

I was talking to a mentor in internal medicine and he told me that doctors who do research are less paid than ones that do clinical work. Is that true ?

Agree with above. Income is super variable in medicine across specialties and provinces, and research adds more variability on top of that. 

In general, yes those doing research make less but there are exceptions where the opposite is true as well. The main twist is whether the physician doing research is fee for service or salaried by a university. If the latter, there are perks such as pension that balance things a bit more in the long run compared to someone doing only clinical ffs work. In that case, depending on specialty, they still probably make less, but not by much in the long run all things considered. 

[X Æ A-12]

Clinician scientists take a pay cut. They also need to spend years doing a PhD, Post-Doc etc aka not making attending physician ca$h. So you have to really love what you do.

[Edict]

Yes and the pay cut is definitely significant. 

[NLengr]

On 5/17/2019 at 12:30 PM, Edict said:

Yes and the pay cut is definitely significant. 

Specialty dependent.

In my specialty, the academic guys don't make much less at all. Plus they have a way easier life on call and on top of that they don't really need to look after post ops, ER/floor consults, patient paperwork, dictation etc. 

The pay cut is a trade off for getting the services of residents/fellows. 

[ZBL]

18 minutes ago, NLengr said:

Specialty dependent.

In my specialty, the academic guys don't make much less at all. Plus they have a way easier life on call and on top of that they don't really need to look after post ops, ER/floor consults, patient paperwork, dictation etc. 

The pay cut is a trade off for getting the services of residents/fellows. 

Plus pension (if actually salaried by the university as a professor, and not just a full clinical professor). 

[indefatigable]

1 hour ago, NLengr said:

Specialty dependent.

That's what I've heard.  Some kind of indexing to community FFS, at least in some provinces.