NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - General-surgery residents in the U.S. often face deep educational debt with small salaries to cover living expenses and loan repayment, a new survey finds.
Responses from more than 400 general-surgery residents show they had median salaries of $60,000 to $65,000 and a median medical educational debt of $200,000 to $250,000, researchers report in the American Journal of Surgery.
"The take-home message is that our surgical trainees expect and deserve fair compensation," said study coauthor Dr. Gentian Kristo, general-surgery-residency site director at the VA Boston Healthcare System/Brigham and Women's Hospital and an assistant professor of surgery at the Harvard Medical School. "Their salaries do not reflect the number and intensity of hours worked, are not comparable to those of other medical staff, and do not take into account their financial and personal sacrifices to achieve an advanced medical education."
"Fair compensation of our residents is important not just because it is the right thing to do from a moral and labor perspective, but also improving the financial situation of our surgical trainees is an important intervention to help reestablish the surgical profession as a sustainable career option for our medical students and to ultimately improve an already serious surgeon shortage," Dr.
