uofamed Posted January 12, 2013 Report Share Posted January 12, 2013 Hello, I am currently in my third year of medical school and I'm one of those people who kinda like everything...I'm leaning towards pediatrics but I have heard from lots of people that pediatricians as a group make less or just as much as family doctors and that it would be better to be a family doc who just sees lots of kids...is this true? Is there any financial advantage to completing a peds residency? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BigM Posted January 12, 2013 Report Share Posted January 12, 2013 Peds is very low on the remuneration scale, the only thing potentially lower is psychiatry. Unfortunately peds also suffers from low job availability. With current funding models you would probably make more as a family doctor investing the same hours than you would as a pediatrician. That said, my personal opinions are that current funding models in family medicine are unsustainable and we will likely see a big drop in family physician remuneration in the upcoming years. Really... why should a family doctor be paid as much or more than a pediatrician when they have less training? The shortage of family doctors is quickly shrinking so their supply/demand ratio will be increasing. Your practise as a family doctor "seeing a lot of kids" vs a pediatrician is going to be very different. Personally I feel that choosing your patient population as a family doctor is much more difficult than you would think. I also believe that it is strongly discouraged as you are supposed to be open to anyone (keeping in mind the # of patients you can reasonably handle) so you are going to end up with a lot of elderly patients as by-and-large that is who requires medical care. Also, your patients are going to grow older, you can't just dump them once they hit 18. Also, as a pediatrician you are going to see much sicker kids as your role is to handle the ones that the referring family doctors required support for. Ultimately, any area of medicine is going to pay enough to keep a roof over your head, food on the table and a nice beach-front cottage if you manage money well. The fields are very different so you would probably be better off picking the one that you really like. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
apache Posted January 13, 2013 Report Share Posted January 13, 2013 no... my psych cleared 700 k one year... just do fm, more options... unless you really love peds Hello, I am currently in my third year of medical school and I'm one of those people who kinda like everything...I'm leaning towards pediatrics but I have heard from lots of people that pediatricians as a group make less or just as much as family doctors and that it would be better to be a family doc who just sees lots of kids...is this true? Is there any financial advantage to completing a peds residency? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BigM Posted January 13, 2013 Report Share Posted January 13, 2013 no... my psych cleared 700 k one year... just do fm, more options... unless you really love peds There are psychiatrists out there that make bank but most studies that have looked at physician remuneration rank it the lowest followed by pediatrics. There will be pediatricians that clear 700K as well, it depends on what you bill for and how much you work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
supafield Posted January 13, 2013 Report Share Posted January 13, 2013 There are psychiatrists out there that make bank but most studies that have looked at physician remuneration rank it the lowest followed by pediatrics. There will be pediatricians that clear 700K as well, it depends on what you bill for and how much you work. A lot of those studies, CIHI, the ICES report in Ontario etc. don't include sessional payments or direct hospital payments which often skews the data down for psych. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Renin Posted January 14, 2013 Report Share Posted January 14, 2013 It also depends how much the psychiatrist was working. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
apache Posted January 14, 2013 Report Share Posted January 14, 2013 private practice, 1 secretary 9 months a year at 7-8 hours a day 5 days a week i know what she bills, i know how to bill it exactly the same, yeah, we don't have a typical doc patient relationship There are psychiatrists out there that make bank but most studies that have looked at physician remuneration rank it the lowest followed by pediatrics. There will be pediatricians that clear 700K as well, it depends on what you bill for and how much you work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
futureGP Posted January 15, 2013 Report Share Posted January 15, 2013 Hello, I am currently in my third year of medical school and I'm one of those people who kinda like everything...I'm leaning towards pediatrics but I have heard from lots of people that pediatricians as a group make less or just as much as family doctors and that it would be better to be a family doc who just sees lots of kids...is this true? Is there any financial advantage to completing a peds residency? probably not a financial advantage. But seriously you're comparing $225k to maybe $200k The salary curve overlaps hugely between peds and fm. the most important thing is knowing what you enjoy the most. Being a pediatrician means you will never see anyone past highschool (giving some room there) whereas being a fm allows that. But being a pediatrician means you will be very well equipped with dealin with kids at a deeper level and do deeper assessments with them vs a fm who just sees a lot of kids i honestly believe salary shouldn't be the focus here when choosing between peds and fm. You'll probably get around the same $$$ after taxes/overhead that they prob have the same lifestyle (whereas $200k vs. $700k is a huge difference) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
goleafsgochris Posted January 17, 2013 Report Share Posted January 17, 2013 private practice, 1 secretary 9 months a year at 7-8 hours a day 5 days a week i know what she bills, i know how to bill it exactly the same, yeah, we don't have a typical doc patient relationship I dont know the psychiatrist you are talking about, but in the city of toronto the average final year blended selary of psychiatrists was under 150k last year. Your 1 rediculous example means nothing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
poormedstudent Posted January 17, 2013 Report Share Posted January 17, 2013 I was in the same position last year struggling between family and peds and in the end I chose family - more that I can do, greater flexibility, shorter training period. And if pay is important to you, you can actually make quite a lot of $$ in family if you work hard. The problem with peds is that they don't get quite the same volume as adult doctors do and the visits take waayy longer time so they end up being remunerated quite poorly. Good luck with your decision! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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