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Peaches LeToure's avatar

Perhaps if the fellows were paid more by their educational institutions (and treated better), they wouldn't feel such a strong desire to accept the money from industry. I don't know how things are now, but I remember well how they were when I did my 'not cardiology' residency. We were treated terribly and paid less than minimal wage once one calculated the hours we worked. This should not be taken as a call to make residency a cushier, more benign experience. I just don't think it is fair to the fellows and the residencies to take away money from industry without talking about why they are so likely to accept that money in the first place. Perhaps an established doctor who earns hundreds of thousands of dollars a year (and gets to actually spend some time with family now and again) doesn't feel like 1800$ is enough money to tempt them. But if you dangled 1800$ in front of me when I was a resident, it would have looked like a true pot of gold. That money would have allowed me to pay some of the enormous debt I carried down. Including the credit card debt I used to purchase groceries for some months. Maybe luckily for my soul, no one ever did offer me money like that when I was a resident. I like to think I would have refused it. But I still remember balancing my checking account down to the pennies every month to make sure I didn't bounce a check.

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Westby Fisher's avatar

There has been an interesting trend at our institution to welcome industry lunches back at our workplace. For a while, we were written up if we took a pen, now lavish lunches poured on staff/fellows as competition to retain overworked CV staff and maintain a “happy place” heats up. The productivity gerbil wheel works for everyone in healthcare delivery but the folks on the front line of patient care.

Burnout high? Feed them cake. We all know how that worked out in the long run.

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