negotiate in Medicine
I will never forget this conversation I had with an attending when I was a third year medical student. It started with an innocent question of what area of medicine I was interested in pursuing. It ended with him telling me that if I really wanted to go into internal medicine, I should consider a higher paying subspecialty in IM. His reasoning? Because as a woman I would ultimately be paid less, so better to pick a higher paying subspecialty to help balance that out. I was obviously lost for words.
Fast forward years later, as I was applying for my first hospitalist job out of residency, I was SO excited to see that pay on my contract. I received the advice that pay wasn’t really negotiable in a starting hospitalist salary in an academic center. I was told, that if I wanted to negotiate at all, that I should focus on negotiating on other aspects of the contract not related to pay or benefits. And anyways, I was making so much more than I was as a resident. So that’s what I did, and I signed my contract without really much negotiation. I later find out that a co-resident taking a near identical position at the same hospital, negotiated his salary and was going to make $10,000 more than me. 🤯
This is why pay transparency and negotiation are so important, particularly to women in academic medicine. But what the heck does this have to do with wellness? Well, think of it this way. Whether you are negotiating for more money, more days off, or better healthcare benefits (hello, fertility benefits), your ability to negotiate can completely change what your job (and your time outside of your job) looks like. That extra $10,000 I missed out on could have been the nicest vacation I’ve ever taken, or could have been the money I used to max out my ROTH IRA for the year. I would like to think I would have used it responsibly in my ROTH IRA, but let’s be real…
We need to flip the script, and make it the norm for women to negotiate.
So here are my top 5 tips for negotiating in academic medicine:
🩺 Do your research beforehand. Spend the extra time and sometimes money to figure out what your role is paying in your area.
🩺 Find a mentor you trust, and ask them for coffee. Ask them about starting salaries for similar positions. Pick their brains about what they wish they would have negotiated in their role. Learn from the people who have done this before us!
🩺 Talk to those currently in the role. Figure out what their day-to-day looks like. Make sure you have a sense of what the pain points of the job will be, and try to use this for your negotiation.
🩺On a boring note - have a lawyer review the contract before signing it. Take your time, and make sure that everything in the contract has been reviewed.
🩺 Always negotiate. Find SOMETHING. My biggest worry was always that if I tried to negotiate, the hospital would revoke my offer. But think of it this way - the hospital has already spent a lot of time and effort into recruiting you. So be kind, and be polite, but negotiate for what you deserve damn it!
