Stewart Wilkey, DO, family medicine physician at Oceanside, Calif.-based Waring Court Pediatric and Adult Medical Group, joined Becker's to discuss the dangers of declining physician pay.
Question: What is the danger of declining physician pay?
Editor's note: These responses were edited lightly for length and clarity.
Stewart Wilkey: Ultimately, the saddest part of declining physician pay is that it will affect patient care. By the time we are attending physicians, we are simply catching up from years of minimal pay. Since the debt burden on most physicians is enormous, it forces physicians (including me) to supplement income by working extra. As we know from data on residency training, extra hours of work can lead to burnout, exhaustion and ultimately poor patient care. We need to have our proverbial "oxygen mask on first," to better do our job. Self-care is difficult when there is an ever-worsening financial burden to consider.