The Average Starting Salary for a Physician

The multitude of medical fields creates a wide spectrum of starting salaries. Each specialist must undergo distinctive training to earn his or her title as a primary care physician, internal medicine physician or surgical physician. All of the following average starting salaries are calculated based on incomes earned across the United States. None include additional benefits. Additionally, each dollar value stands for the first-year salary of the indicated type of physician.

Primary Care Physicians

Primary care physicians deal with a broad scope of patients. Their services range from providing basic diagnoses and dealing with common illnesses to providing annual checkups. Those doctors who begin in a family practice earn an annual average of $125,000. Pediatricians start at a salary of about $120,000 per year. Specialty doctors, who may actually operate or treat pertinent medical problems, such as opthalmologists, earn about $145,000 each year. Gynecologists earn $175,000 on average a year, followed by otolaryngologists at $165,000 per year.

Internal Medicine Physicians

Internal medicine physicians manage the diagnostics and non-surgical treatment of patients. The annual earnings for a starting internal medicine physician averages $128,000. Of note are the average beginning salaries for endocrinologists ($140,000), neurologists ($160,000), oncologists ($150,000), pulmunologists ($125,000), rheumatologists ($110,000), nephrologists ($129,000), gastroenterologists ($140,000) and cardiologists ($180,000).

Surgical Physicians

Operative doctors typically earn larger amounts of money due to the necessary precision, attention and analyzation their work requires. Average starting salaries range from that of general surgeons and urologists (at $150,000 per year) to cardiovascular surgeons (at around $208,000 per year). Within this broad financial scope are the yearly beginning salaries of colon and rectal surgeons ($155,000), neuro surgeons ($185,000), oral and maxillofacial surgeons ($107,000), orthopedic surgeons ($200,000), plastic surgeons ($160,000) and vascular surgeons ($185,000).

Hospital Physicians

Some fields require certain specialists to take X-rays, provide medicine or take immediate action. For this reason, some physicians will see a patient only when their skills are required (such as anesthesiologists who administer anesthesiology), as opposed to committing to a specific patient's case. The starting salaries for these physicians are still comparable to others. For instance, the average annual starting salary of radiologists is $160,000; anesthesiologists is $130,000; and emergency medicine physicians is $180,000.

Other Physicians

Annual salaries for other specialized physicians differ. Some of these miscellaneous fields include dermatology (in which physicians earn an average starting salary of $160,000 per year) and psychiatry (with a yearly starting salary of about $150,000).

References

• Physician First Year Starting Salary National Average
• Average Non-Starting Salaries of Physicians

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