California Society of Anesthesiologists Bulletin Fall 2012 - (Page 16)
PEEriNg ovEr thE EthEr scrEEN
Money Well Spent for Your MD Degree? Maybe!
By Karen S. Sibert, MD, Associate Editor
ast summer, I suggested in a New York Times op-ed piece that it doesn’t benefit American society for growing numbers of physicians to work parttime. There is a shortage of doctors, and a limited number of medical schools and residency programs to train new ones. Now, in a recent article in The Atlantic magazine — “Is Medical School a Worthwhile Investment for Women?” — two Yale economists conclude that physicians might as well work full-time or more because, if we don’t, medical school is an investment of time and money that doesn’t make financial sense. This argument comes as no surprise. The article specifically points to the example of American primary care physicians. Using a tool called net present value (NPV) calculation, professors Keith Chen and Judith Chevalier compared the costs of earning a degree against the income earned over the likely course of a career. They then compared the NPV of training as a physician assistant (PA) to that of training as a primary care physician, and also looked at gender differences in anticipated earnings. Higher NPV is desirable; it means you are getting more value in terms of lifetime earnings for the time and money invested in your education. Their conclusion? “We found that, for over half of women doctors in our data, the NPV of becoming a primary-care physician was less than the NPV of becoming a physician assistant,” the authors wrote.
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Was this true for men as well? No, said the authors. Most men are better off financially if they become physicians. But women physicians tend to earn less than their male counterparts, and they also tend to work less. A male physician “earns more per hour relative to the male PA than the female doctor earns relative to the female PA,” the authors noted. “However, a big part of the difference comes from an hours gap. The vast majority of male doctors under the age of 55 work substantially more than the standard 40 hour work week. In contrast, most female doctors work between 2 to 10 hours fewer than this per week.” The professors concluded, “Even though both male and female doctors earn higher wages than their PA counterparts, most female doctors don’t work enough hours at those wages to financially justify the costs of becoming a doctor.” Might these conclusions be equally applicable to anesthesiologists in comparison to nurse anesthetists? Let’s look at some numbers. Every year, Medscape publishes information on physician salaries. Anesthesiologists came in fourth on the list in 2012 with average annual compensation of $309,000, tied with urologists, and exceeded only by radiologists, orthopedic surgeons, and cardiologists. According to Medscape, male physicians across all specialties earned about 40 percent more than women physicians in 2012: $242,000 compared to $173,000. In anesthesiology, the gender pay differential was somewhat less — male anesthesiologists earned on average $324,000, or 25 percent more than the average $260,000 reported for women.
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of California Society of Anesthesiologists Bulletin Fall 2012
A New Look, a Continuing Commitment
Jack L. Moore, MD, FACA (1934-2012)
Time to Reevaluate...
Politics and the 2012 California Legislative Session
Report from the Legislative and Practice Affairs Devision
Money Well Spent for Your MD Degree? Maybe!
Atul Gawande, MD, Advocates 'Cheesecake Factory' Medicine
The Cheesecake Cocktail
Autumn 2012 Report
2013 Winter Anesthesia Seminar
The Department of Anesthesia and Perioperative Care at the University of California, San Francisco: A Brief Historical Overview
The 2012 Spring Anesthesia Seminar
California and National News
Spinal Cord Stimulation
California Society of Anesthesiologists Bulletin Fall 2012
https://www.nxtbook.com/allen/csab/63-1
https://www.nxtbook.com/allen/csab/62-4
https://www.nxtbook.com/allen/csab/62-3
https://www.nxtbook.com/allen/csab/62-2
https://www.nxtbook.com/allen/csab/62-1
https://www.nxtbook.com/allen/csab/61-4
https://www.nxtbookmedia.com