re: Medical residency spinoff. Rank the specialties

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I think the best way to evaluate pay is the per hour pay.

If you're a neurosurgeon or orthopod making $750k per year, but working 100 hour weeks almost every week, it really dilutes things. And will burn you out no matter how much you love your job. For most people, it doesn't matter how much you make, you'll find a way to piss it all away. . .

On the other hand, if you can be a FP or IM doc, work a 40-45 hour week (yes, it exists) and make $250k-$300K, it's a similar situation insofar as per hour pay. The trade off is that you're home more with your family, in your treestand, on your boat, etc. If you can't live a great life on that income, you've got problems.

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Emergency medicine is nice because you can work 12 ten hour shifts a month which equates to about 27 hours a week. Doctors around Shreveport and doctors in Texas can pull 400k with those hours. That comes out to close to 300 bucks an hour and minimal hours worked. No call. No pagers. Freedom to just pick up and move and go practice somewhere with a beach or with mountains for a little while if that's your thing. Hell, some docs work really hard the first two weeks of the month and then travel a week or two. Being able to take a vacation once a month is a rare thing in any field, let alone medicine. There's a reason why emergency medicine is getting more and more competitive. The "roads" thing is sometimes called e-roads now.

Also, because procedures pay so well and you do your own, EM isn't facing the infringement that is being seen from other providers on fields like radiology or anesthesiology.