Question: How satisfied with your income are you currently? What changes do you hope to see related to your income?
Editor’s note: This response was edited lightly for brevity and clarity.
Dr. Lance Wobus: I am a PGY-1 resident, so of course I’m very dissatisfied with my income. I make about $79,000 a year in New York City and am working 60 to 80 hours a week in my medicine rotation (I am a psych resident). I’ve always thought the match is essentially forced labor — we take whatever the programs decide to give us or else we don’t practice medicine.
The best way forward is to unionize, hands down. This is a growing movement, although everyone I know fears being labeled as a “troublemaker,” so they stay quiet. They’d rather suffer (what I consider to be) injustice rather than getting dismissed from a residency program, jeopardizing their medical career. More moonlighting opportunities to supplement income would also be beneficial, but there is simply no time, at least in my schedule.
