It’s not (always) all about the money. Despite the fact that geriatricians earn the lowest salaries of any medical specialty, a study published in BMC Health Services Research1 replicated earlier findings that geriatric specialists are nearly the most satisfied doctors out there. They lag only pediatric emergency medicine, another specialty on the low end of the income spectrum. The study, led by J. Paul Leigh, PhD, a health economist at the UC Davis Center for Healthcare Policy and Research, surveyed over 6,500 doctors in 42 different specialties to obtain their results. (For more information, see the relevant Chicago Tribune article.)

That is good news for the field, but not exactly news for the geriatricians I know. Time and time again they tell me how much they love their practice and their patients. They tell me how geriatric medicine is (but not by that name) what other doctors dream about when they imagine what good doctoring should be: long-term satisfying relationships with their patients and other health professionals, a focus on the whole person and how patients lead their lives, sufficient face time with patients and families to work through complex, interconnected issues... These practice components are at the core of geriatric medicine.

So we have again findings and concrete data from a high quality study that support our conviction that caring for older adults can be the foundation of a meaningful, satisfying career in medicine. We just need to recruit more resident physicians into geriatrics careers. We certainly need to improve the financial outlook for physicians who choose geriatrics so that concern about paying off education loans isn’t scaring away interested students. I envision a combination of loan forgiveness programs for physicians who complete geriatrics programs combined with improvements in reimbursements for practicing geriatrics specialists. Perhaps those will be the magic ingredients in the recipe we need to halt and begin reversing the decline in the number of geriatrics specialists in this country.

1Leigh JP, Tancredi DJ, Kravitz RL. Physician career satisfaction within specialties. BMC Health Services Research 2009, 9:166.