Hey.
I’ve been reading Wikipedia article about Orthopedic Surgery and there is a link to orthopedic surgeon job description along with a salary range. I was really surprised that these specialist get $197,150 – $356,700 yearly. Why do we pay them so much money? I don’t think that their job is much harder that other surgeons work.
Supply and demand.
What do you think other surgical subspecialists (neurosurgery, cardiothoracic surgery, vascular surgery, etc) make?
For that matter, what do you think General Surgeons make?
Doctors make money, no two ways about it.
This handy link covers a good number of medical doctors, with some surgeons salaries in there too. The lowest I saw from a quick overview of a few of the listed professionas was $135,000/year for a doctor specializing in pediatrics. If you find one lower than that, I’ll be surprising. The average for lowest reported salary seems to be in the $150,000/range.
Again, doctors make money.
Doctors also rack up massive amounts of debt during their schooling and training and often spend a decade or so working for little to no money in the early days of their careers. This kind of salary is why they’re willing to do that.
Plus many of them have gigantic bills for their malpractice insurance. I assume orthopedics (what with the risk of issues/complaints with spinal-related surgery) is pretty far up there.
I would love to know how many doctors get into their field because of the money and how many choose a specialty because it’s something that interests them. Surely money can’t be the sole motivator.
As for orthopedists, my husband has had several perform surgery on his spine (3 different surgeons, 5 different surgeries) and when I look at how much time each operation took, plus the preliminary appointments and the followups, both in the hospital and out, I wouldn’t say any of them were ridiculously overcompensated. When you consider the extensive education as well as their experience, well, it reminds me of an old joke:
A factory goes down because a critical piece of machinery has ceased to work. A grizzled old repairman is brought in - he circles the machine, listens when it attempts to start, then takes a big ol’ wrench and gives it a good whack, at which point, it starts working again. He presents the plant manager with a bill for $50,000. The manager is aghast and asks how he can justify such a charge, so the repairman itemizes the bill: Whacking machine with wrench - $25, Knowing where to whack and how hard - $49,975
Just because the pro makes it look easy doesn’t mean it’s easy…
True. A friend of mine in the USA used to be a foot surgeon but she got tired of being sued a couple of times a year and became an estate agent instead.
Family story. Before my original knee surgery in ~2001, I asked my sister to check with her anesthesiologist husband to see if the surgery being recommended was typical and to see if there was something that I should be looking for, or looking out for, when picking the surgeon.
She came back saying: “he says the good news is that orthos get sued a lot.” Then she explained that the comment was mostly a variation of “dead men don’t sue,” and meant that nearly everyone survives ortho surgery, especially in the regular joints. In other words, whatever the other risks were, I was in very little risk of dying. And the only thing to look for was someone who did that exact type of surgery routinely. I was good.
Unfortunately, orthos are specialists, so patients usually don’t have an ongoing history with them to start with, and the surgeons are not expecting to have an ongoing relationship with the patients after. Combine that with the fact that most ortho surgeries have a big variation in outcome, and you end up with patients who are: in pain, unhappy, still not completely mobile, not feeling listened to, and who don’t particularly like the doctor. That’s prime lawsuit territory.
Yep. Orthopedic surgery may not make you better, but it will definitely make you different!
Because health care in the USA is a ripoff.
Next question.
Orthopedic surgeries tend to be long (as mentioned already), which requires a lot of stamina and strength just to stand for 12 hours at a time over a surgical table. It also means long days, since just one patient may take 15 hours by the time you get your consents, scrub, do the surgery, scrub again and get your charting done. While you *can *specialize in bunions 9-5, many orthos work at hospitals and their surgeries are often emergency/trauma, so unlike a dermatologist, you can expect to be on call for some ugly days and shifts sometimes. The surgeries themselves often require a good bit of brute physical strength to manipulate, drill, maneuver and reposition things, as well as delicate grace to align little teeny tiny things that can’t get squished. It wouldn’t surprise me if the smallest surgeons just can’t do the brute force tasks required, and that the biggest just have ham hands that can’t handle the detail work, which is going to narrow your pool.
I can say that orthopedic surgeons are the only MDs I know who can bandage worth a damn. I’m starting to unofficially specialize in wound care (and may go into the training required to actually become a certified WOC RN, I’m not sure yet) and most doctors’ bandages suck. (Note: copious amounts of tape /= bandage) Orthopods got it goin’ on, though.
Part of it is probably because if you need an orthopedist - you NEED an orthopedist. They’re not optional.
You can live with many untreated ailments for years. If you’ve broken a bone in an extremity – you’re not going anywhere except straight to the ER to get fixed.
It always seemed like a boring specialty to me - meh, broken bones, big deal, brains are much more interesting. That said – specialty wise I’ve needed an ortho way more often than any other specialist, mostly because I’m a klutz.
Orthopedic surgery is pretty brutal stuff - the docs are in there with hammers, chisels, drills, saws…
Once upon a time I worked on a ski patrol. Being as skiing is a seasonal business, a goodly number of my fellow patrollers were carpenters and builders in the off-season (or possibly were ski patrollers in the off-season, take your pick).
We had an orthopedic surgeon in to give us a lecture one time, and he pointed out that the tools he used were similar to the Dewalt and Ryobi drills and saws the builders used, “but more expensive!”
The carpenters all sat back and said, “Whoa! Must be Porter-Cable!”
And the supply is purposefully limited by the American Medical Association by deciding how many medical students there are every year; they are a very powerful trade union.
My wife and I were just discussing Orthopedic surgeons last night. Our feelings were that they are the only doctors who actually fix what ails you. Most of the time, when I go to a doctor I’m hoping they can discover what is wrong with me and that they happen to have a pill that will magically fix the problem. I am almost always disappointed. Sure, they will give me a salve or pill that might sort of help in the long run, they just can’t “fix” the problem. Orthopedic surgeons can generally fix the problems they find. It takes a lot of time, pain and rehab sometimes but they make that knee or hip work again in a noticeable way.
And yet just before my first knee surgery, the anesthesiologist tried to convince me to have a sedative and spinal block instead of general anesthesia. Um. No. This was for a high tibial osteotomy (which I affectionately refer to as a ‘bone wedgie’). There were going to be saws and drills.
“You’ll probably be completely asleep through the whole thing.”
“No. Put me out.”
“You won’t remember anything.”
“Nope. Not a chance.”
"General anesthesia is harder on the body. It takes longer to recover . . . "
“I can deal with that. General anesthesia. No question.”
I wouldn’t even want to watch ortho surgery. The thought of taking saws and drills to someone’s bones while swathed in a contamination suit and faceplate . . . (shivver). I’m not going to complain about their pay rate. The smell alone would do me in.
Those numbers actually seem a little low to me. Some of my family medicine residents are getting starting salaries over $200K a year, so I can’t imagine an orthopod working for less than that. My guess is that the $197K represents either particularly cushy academic jobs, “mommy-track” positions that are less than full time, or docs near the end of their careers and slowing down.
Of course, I’m mostly familiar with “underserved” areas where the jobs tend to pay somewhat more because you can’t attract good people to them otherwise. Docs in more desirable areas may indeed get paid less.
I would think orthopedists also have to be physically stronger than most doctors. A neurosurgeon, for example, would need a very delicate touch and the ability to stand on their feet for hours on end. An orthopedist needs that AND the ability to wrestle bones back into place.
I dunno - I think the guy who took out my appendix fixed what was wrong. Then there was the family physician who removed the two pre-cancerous skin growths I had. And the OB/GYN who took care of my ovarian cysts.
And I have to say, of the 3 orthopedic surgeons who worked on my husband, 2 didn’t seem to help much. Even tho he didn’t say so, I think the third one was fixing their mistakes.
Dare I suggest that like in any other field, you’ve got good practitioners and not-so-good…