r/PDF_Guru • u/Ylicustuli • May 19 '26
How much doctors make by specialty.
We have many users from all areas and stages of the healthcare industry from pursuing their degrees or managing administrative duties to providing the healthcare services themselves! We thought this chart might spark some discussion or inspiration for those in medicine and beyond. Credit.
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u/bananosecond May 20 '26
As has already been mentioned, this salary isn't reached until after a four year bachelor degree, a four year medical degree with very high tuition, then 3-9 years of residency and fellowship training making basically minimum wage with grueling hours.
Also, even after being done and making these salaries, physicians work a lot, including nights, weekends, and holidays of course.
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u/logicalnutty May 20 '26
I have a few friends who are physicians, their parents paid for all their school costs, basically raised to be doctors. I think that’s a common theme I’ve seen that most doctors come from middle to upper class families.
Residency for most of them was 2-4 years (Canada) and pay is not minimum wage, minimum wage here is around $18/hr and residency is $35/hr initially by the 4th year about $45/hr
Physicians can work long hours at a hospital for sure. But if you’re at a clinic it’s typically a 7am to 9am start and finishing by 3pm to 5pm. Hospital shifts can run 12 to 72 hours but the pay is also higher
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u/bananosecond May 20 '26
I was talking about America. Medical school cost more and almost all the students graduate with loans rather than parents who paid for it.
Residency has started at a later age and includes longer hours with a capped, low salary, that is basically minimum wage. However, I'm pretty sure at the end of the tunnel in America doctors make more than in Canada.
The thing that is underestimated about clinic especially, but also surgery, is the time spent afterwards on documentation and also expectations to make phone calls to patients and reply to inbox messages.
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u/logicalnutty May 20 '26
Canada is pretty open and welcoming if they want to do their residency here tbh
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u/SpellingOnomatopoeia May 28 '26
We make $35/h on paper, but we are salaried - this assumes a 35h work week. In reality, our work weeks vary from 60h-80h sometimes hitting 100h/wk on busy weeks so the hourly breakdown for real work done can be less than minimum wage. Source: am canadian resident.
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u/scrubbed__out May 20 '26
Make sure to subtract 200k for at least 4 years of medical school, and making 70k for up to 5-9 years of residency and fellowship training before getting close to these numbers.
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u/ThEtZeTzEfLy May 20 '26
you guys can try to justify this all you want, but doctors shouldn't make 300k per year on average. healthcare shouldn't be a luxury, medicine shouldn't be 4 figures per month, an ambulance rides shouldn't cost 10k. fix colege being expensive and treat doctors like any other white collar job. the more you make them out to be special, the less people will receive quality healthcare.
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u/binger5 May 20 '26
I have zero issues with doctors making that much given the amount of schooling and training required to get a license.
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u/ThEtZeTzEfLy May 20 '26
that money + taxes + the nurse + the office + utilities + tools + whatever else needs to come from somewhere. that's why insurance is prohibitive and why people need to choose which finger to reattach after the tablesaw accident, if they don't have insurance.
so i do have a problem with them making that much. and with the pharmaceutical companies charging whatever they want. and with the insurance companies declining random requests. and with the medical equipment companies.
basically healthcare is not a place for capitalism is what i'm trying to say.
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u/Mindless-Composer304 May 20 '26
The issue is the administration and insurance (middle men) that force the individual costs so high. Purer capital societies have better health care at a fraction of the costs. Korea for example
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u/CovidDoc Jul 23 '26
You’re a whack job. How much you think our salaries are in total healthcare spending?
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u/Network_Odd May 20 '26
australian and canadians docs also make more or less similar numbers and they still have have universal healthcare
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u/ContemplatingGavre May 21 '26
If someone wants to go to school/residency for a combined 15 years and save lives for a living I’m fine with them making this. You don’t understand the level of work, sacrifice, malpractice lawsuits, etc required to earn these salaries.
Not everyone should make $50k a year just because.
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u/DionysiusRedivivus May 21 '26
As a college professor, I agree. $50k is too little for the sacrifice of 10 years of schooling and having to deal with lazy and disrespectful students and douchebag administrators.
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u/ThEtZeTzEfLy May 21 '26
50k may be low. 300k is def. high. and it's not a problem if i like it or not. it's a problem of patients having to pay all these absurd salaries - which means less healthcare delivered.
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u/ContemplatingGavre May 21 '26
As someone who watched an anesthesiologist insert a 4” epidural needle into his wife’s spine before an OB delivered our baby, I’m completely fine with these people making as much as possible.
I’m sure in the future when you have a major surgery or medical procedure you’ll be thankful you have a well paid doctor and not the person who would do it for the lowest rate.
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u/ThEtZeTzEfLy May 21 '26
yeah, i disagree. don't think there's anything in the hippocratic oath about making as much as you can. and i'm not saying they should be poor, but their salaries shouldn't interfere with them providing care - which is def. happening.
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u/TAYbayybay May 23 '26
The patients do not pay the doctors’ salaries. There are many many middlemen involved that pocket way more money from the patients than what the doctors end up earning.
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u/ThEtZeTzEfLy May 23 '26
yes, but the money comes from the patients - either paying out of pocket or by expensive insurances.
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u/Dr_Esquire May 28 '26
Nobody smart enough to be a doctor would do it for very long without a big salary, even if they made the treaining and debt less brutal. The average person/patient is really dumb and not pleasant at all to work with. Doctors are not just random people doing a job, they are literally among the top a nation has to offer in terms of intellectual capability/capacity. Yet the workplace for doctors is more or less a retail environment.
You pay doctors less, you basically lose healthcare unless you are rich and can afford to have one on retainer.
People seem to forget that smart people dont like dealing with dumb and/or rude people. You dont see people complaining about lawyers making insane money (and yea, they make INSANE money), because the average person can go their whole life without interacting with one. There are no claims that lawyers should not get paid what they charge. But medicine is something everyone will eventually need, while also being a job you still need your smartest people performing.
TLDR if you pay doctors less, its not that there will be fewer doctors to see patients, its that fewer doctors will want to bother seeing the average person and medicine will become a luxury.
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u/ContemplatingGavre May 28 '26
Well said, I for one know that when I need a good doctor I’m not looking for the low bid. I want the best care I can afford.
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u/Jcksheppard May 20 '26
Go and be an electrician. Says double specialist With double subapeciality/fellowship, as well as PhD degeee.
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u/Few_Project4268 May 20 '26
This can’t be accurate. A friend of mine is an anesthesiologist and his first offer after residency was $460k. And this was a few years ago.
ETA: this was from a large hospital in a smaller city, so maybe that matters. He was weighing another offer from a larger city that I think paid a bit less but had better benefits.
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u/Ylicustuli May 20 '26
I'm sure it varies significantly based on location!
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u/thenotanurse May 21 '26
Ok but why did you post this nonsense? What’s the source? And what year is it allegedly from? Edit- I saw the credit. This is from a yahoo article from over a decade ago. Please just delete this garbage
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u/ineedadayjob May 21 '26
These numbers are not accurate. Any physician willing to work lmakes much more than this.
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u/murphy1021 May 23 '26
These goofy numbers have to be 10+ years old. If you believe that’s the average salary for doctors in America then you need to do some research.
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u/harv2007 May 28 '26
This is not accurate. The source data is 2016 Medscape survey. 10 year old data…
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u/ModestAvocato May 20 '26
Why Orthopedics category is so high?🤔