Money and Time

Residents are paid a fixed salary. I believe the amount of money we make as residents is comparable among all residency programs throughout the nation. In fact, other than a cost of living adjustment, graduate medical programs are not allowed to increase (or decrease) a resident's salary. The purpose of this is to prevent applicants from deciding on a program because of its compensation. In order to keep all residency programs on a level playing field, the salary is set. Of course, programs can tweak this value by adding an "education fund" or other type of stipend, so it's not a perfect system.

Nevertheless, this means that regardless of the hours we work as a resident, the money we make is constant. In fact, working longer hours and extra days means the amount of money we make per hour goes down. As a result, when looking purely at the finances, we hope to do less work, have fewer cases, and see fewer patients. Of course, money is hardly the biggest driver in residency, so we work the hours we do and enjoy seeing more cases because of the education, training, and inherent value of patient interactions.

On the other hand, after we finish our training, the amount of money we make is directly correlated with our productivity. Instead of wishing for quiet call nights, we would rather be busy all night. If we've committed to working that night, we might as well make money from it. This all seems obvious, but it is a paradigm shift for us. While a very long add-on list might be a little discouraging, at least we are making more money per hour rather than less.