6 ms·
How much money does an anesthesiologist make these days?
by blackrock 6y ago
How much money does an anesthesiologist make these days?
- beamatronic 6y ago$400k+ last I heard
- Scoundreller 6y agoDouble that if you’re crooked :)
- kevingadd 6y agoNo complaints here given how your life is in their hands during surgery
- eecc 6y agoNot to mention the nurse inventorising the clamps and pads that the surgeon is stuffing inside your belly. Heck, even the cleaner carefully mopping every crevice in the surgery room to kill all those pesky MRSA bacteria before they spoil your day. Surgery is a team effort
- rscho 6y agoTeam effort, my ass. In the OR, everyone except the surgeon is treated like shit and especially anesthesiologists, since they're first to arrive, last to leave and have no choice but to handle whatever comes their way.
- philwelch 6y agoYeah, definitely not the kind of job you give to the lowest bidder.
- a_imho 6y agoStupid question, because I never understood this. Anesthetics seems like a mostly mechanical process with little room to deviate from the established procedures both for medical and legal reasons. What am I missing, what makes anesthesiologist that highly paid?
- Peradine 6y agoA common comparison is drawn to flying a plane - its a proceduralised and mechanical process for a lot of the time, but occasionally unexpected things happen and you need knowledge and skills to react quickly and prevent serious injury and death. Its like flying a plane but if every plane was built differently with no instruction manual, some of the planes are badly broken before you take off, and someone's trying to repair the engines in mid air. I'm currently revising for my anaesthetics exams. The things I'm meant to know include: * The physics and mechanical principles of all the equipment I use, from the ventilator to the pulse oximiter - so that I can identify when and how it might fail and how to respond * The pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, and mechanism of all the drugs I might use - so I can understand their effects, side-effects, and interactions * The physiology and function of the human body, including the respiratory, circulatory, neurological, renal, gastrointestinal, musculoskeletal, and immune systems - so I can understand how anaesthesia effects these systems, and how diseases and disorders of the systems will interact with the anaesthetic and how problems can be identified and treated * The anatomy of the body, with particular focus on the head and neck anatomy to aide in intubation and airway procedures, and neuro-anatomy to aide in regional anaesthetic techniques * The anatomical, phsiological, and pharmacological consequences of pregnancy, childhood, old-age, and a huge variety of acute and chronic diseases - so I can understand and adapt anaesthetics to these conditions
- rleigh 6y agoYou would have to read up on the science of anaesthesiology for a full understanding. I'll describe just a few of the subtleties I've encountered. About two decades back, I was a medical researcher who did all the vetinary qualifications for animal research including general anaesthesia, all the different types of analgesics and dissociatives, and I subsequently spent a few months working with mice and injectable liquid anaesthetics. You're playing a fine balance between keeping the animal under, and killing it. You have to continually observe and balance the degree of anaesthesia which you can test with pain reflexes and core reflexes, and adjust the dosage accordingly. Too much and you depress the core functions to the point breathing stops. Too little and the animal retains consciousness along with pain reflexes. With larger animals you can use similar equipment to what you would use with humans. Small ones require direct physical observation. There's a simple dosage rule: n ml anaesthetic per gram bodyweight. So you would weigh the mouse, calculate the dose and then inject it. Sounds easy enough. Not so. It also depends upon the percentage of fat tissue. If the mouse is fat, the fat tissue will absorb the anaesthetic and then slowly release it. This changes the dynamics of how fast the anaesthetic takes effect, and how deep and how long lasting the anaesthesia will be. Skinny mice would go under almost immediately. Fat mice might take 10 minutes. But if you topped up the dose, you would risk the dosage reaching fatal levels a few minutes down the line as the fat tissue released its stored anaesthetic. You would learn to adapt the formula by experience, but this is just one factor to consider. Now imagine how difficult this is with obese human patients. Or anorexic patients. Or sick patients. Patients on various drugs. Or patients with different metabolic rates. There are dozens of factors, making each case unique. Anaesthesiologists have a huge responsibility, and taking great care and skill to keep their patients alive. We think of this as routine, and it is, but that doesn't make it simple or easy to do. This stuff looks simple on paper. Doing it in practice is far, far more difficult and demanding.
- rscho 6y agoVery much depends on where you work.
- jedberg 6y agoThey make $400K+, and also have the highest malpractice insurance rates of all the disciplines. On the upside, they have low overhead, since they don't need an office to see patients in.
- ReallyAnonymous 6y agoActually, anesthesiologists are middle of the pac in regards to malpractice. Whenever someone quotes income levels for physicians, it's usually after all expenses, including malpractice. It really doesn't matter how much a doctor pays in malpractice, it's what their net income is after. Neurosurgeons pay close to $100k / year, but make $500k+. Anyway, anesthesia is much safer than 30 years ago https://theanesthesiaconsultant.com/do-anesthesiologists-have-the-highest-malpractice-insurance-rates/ https://theanesthesiaconsultant.com/do-anesthesiologists-hav...
- joefourier 6y agoI’m amazed at how American medical salaries are orders of magnitude out of proportion with other western countries. Here in Ireland an anaesthesiologist makes about 100k€/year, and about 60k€/year after tax. That wouldn’t even cover malpractice insurance in the US. Salaries for other doctors and surgeons are similar - a neurosurgeon will make perhaps 4x-5x less money here than in the States. Meanwhile cost of living in Dublin is about the same as major American cities like Seattle with one of the highest rents in Europe.
- Jedd 6y agoComparing cost of living in a country with proper healthcare and a significantly less litigious population isn't like-for-like.
- blackrock 6y agoPerhaps this means that Ireland has a better health care system? Assuming that your surgical mortality rate is similar to that of the United States. Realize that the cost of basic medical insurance in the United States, for you and your family (spouse and children), is now approaching $7,000/year USD. It can easily exceed $550/month. This is tied to your employer. And this is just insurance. You still have to pay some percentage of the cost if you actually have to perform the procedure.