Canadian Internal Medicine Income/Lifestyle

[ConfusedGunner]

What is the lifestyle and income of community GIM like in Canada?

Do they usually end up working 50 hours a week with call? Is it the 2 week on and 2 week off model that you see in community sites? Or is it a certain number of weeks? 

Out of residency, Ive heard 400-500k is what they make but I feel like that’s probably what an established internal medicine doc makes after being established for a while? 

[IMislove]

4 hours ago, ConfusedGunner said:

Do they usually end up working 50 hours a week with call?

Oh this gotta be so far off base. I remember my staff working 10ish hour days at least, PLUS weekend rounding. So working close to 70/week while on service, but that's just one centre at one site, at an academic area. Need an internal resident to chime in here.

[zxcccxz]

21 hours ago, ConfusedGunner said:

What is the lifestyle and income of community GIM like in Canada?

Do they usually end up working 50 hours a week with call? Is it the 2 week on and 2 week off model that you see in community sites? Or is it a certain number of weeks? 

Out of residency, Ive heard 400-500k is what they make but I feel like that’s probably what an established internal medicine doc makes after being established for a while? 

I think it’s super variable geographically.

I can tell you how it works where I did med school and where I’m doing residency.

In med school (large city/academic center) - during the day, staff was usually there at 7am and left at 5-5:30pm. On weekends they’d be there the whole day as well, but weekend rounding only took the morning, so the rest of the day, they just stuck around in case something came up. They did not do any call while in service. Generally they did 1 week on and then several weeks off. Only ever worked with one staff that was on for two weeks at once and he said he’s prob gonna stop doing that cause it’s getting too tiring.

For my residency site, staff generally gets here at 8-8:15am. They leave usually by 5-5:30 although sometimes they have stayed until 6:30 at the latest (even though handover is at 5pm to the evening team). They do a week on at once. They do also do around 2-3 days of overnight call during their week of service because we aren’t at a large academic site where there’s an army of residents to cover call.

My understanding is that the GIMs make more money at my residency site than my med school site because smaller site = less specialists available = more procedures/billing opportunities.

 

[anon5678]

@ACHQ. Interested to hear his/her input on this

[ACHQ]

1 hour ago, anon5678 said:

@ACHQ. Interested to hear his/her input on this

It's really hard for me to give one number for GIM in ALL of Canada. Different provinces have different billing codes and $ attached to each of those codes. Even within a province, centres are set up slightly differently. Volumes can also vary.

 

What I can tell you based off of the GTHA, in community sites (that are busy) is a range. That range can be higher or lower depending on really how much you work, how many nights and weekends/holidays vs how much time you have off. I think a rough estimate between 350-500k is accurate. Note that this is just FFS billings and does not include stipends which at some sites can be alot ranging between 50-100k for the year.

[GIMPCx]

On 8/12/2023 at 3:43 PM, ConfusedGunner said:

What is the lifestyle and income of community GIM like in Canada?

Do they usually end up working 50 hours a week with call? Is it the 2 week on and 2 week off model that you see in community sites? Or is it a certain number of weeks? 

Out of residency, Ive heard 400-500k is what they make but I feel like that’s probably what an established internal medicine doc makes after being established for a while? 

You make more when you first start out. As you get established you make less. 
 

no body on the community works like that. MRP work generally sucks and people try to do as little as possible. 
 

The big money is in ER shifts especially in a busy hospital. You can make 3-6k a night. So most new grads usually try and mop up nights and work hard until family or life or fatigue forces them to back off. 
 

If you do a combination of 6-12 weeks MRP and 4-8 GIM ER and some clinic and consult week stuff you can easily make 4-600k. No overhead either.