Hot Topic: Doctor's Salary

 

One hot topic on the medical field in general is the high salary. Some people often criticize how high the salary is, but they don’t consider the long hours and all that it takes financially and physically to get through medical school. Here are the facts, the average annual salary for a doctor is around 209,044$ US, doctor’s salaries have risen 4.6% since last year and will continue to rise. The highest annual salary for a doctor is 359,000$. These are the statistics that people always come back to when doctors complain of the long hours and the emotional toll, they say “You can’t be exhausted you’re making 6 digits, it’s not like you’re a nurse”. What they don’t take into account is the cost of medical school. In fact, the average cost of in-state medical school in the US is around 34,592$ US per year, and it’s at least 5 years.  Out-of-state schools are around 58,668$ US per year. Private medical schools are around 61,436$ US per year. The total cost of medical school in the US averages 800, 000$, this includes tuition fees, living fees and book costs.     

 

To summarize, that “high salary” that people criticize will mostly get used to pay back the outstanding student loans for the first 10-15 years. If we put aside the cost of studies, being a doctor has a huge emotional toll on a person, you lose patients every day and work long hours while also being on-call on some days off. You can get called to the hospital anytime when one of your patients goes into critical state out-of-nowhere. I personally think that the high salary that doctors earn is well-deserved and should not be lower. It’s such a huge job with lots of responsibilities that can really take a toll on someone’s mental and physical state and that high salary helps them keep going because why would you keep being exhausted if you get a small salary.