NEW ORLEANS Careers in academia can offer dermatologists financial security and a rich personal life just like jobs in private practice, academic dermatologists said at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Dermatology.
Dermatologists working at universities will still be able pay off their medical school debt, said Barbara A. Gilchrest, M.D., professor and chair of the department of dermatology at Boston University.
"You absolutely can do this and have a very good time in the process," Dr. Gilchrest told a group of residents at the meeting.
Over the years, academic careers have gotten a bad reputation, said Lynn Cornelius, M.D., associate professor of medicine and chief of the division of dermatology at Washington University, St. Louis.
There are a number of misconceptions about working in the university setting.
For starters, there are more career tracks available, she said. In the past, almost all academic dermatologists were clinician investigators who did it allmaintaining both a lab and teaching. Today, clinician investigators or scientists spend the majority of their time performing research, Dr. Cornelius said.
Dermatologists in the academic world can also become clinician educators who spend most of their time involved in teaching activities, she said.
And the difference in earning potential between private practice and academia may not be as large as some people think, Dr. Cornelius said.
Although salaries vary by region, most private practice dermatologists can earn a starting salary of about $200,000 per year, with the potential to earn more than $400,000 per year in the long term, she pointed out.
Although salaries in academia don't match up, the average academic salaries in dermatology are comparable with starting salaries in private practice, Dr. Cornelius said.
It may, however, take a year or more to get to those levels, she said, and the salary may vary depending on the level of patient care that the physician provides.
There are a lot of opportunities right now in academic dermatology, said John Olerud, M.D., president of the Association of Professors of Dermatology and professor of medicine and head of the division of dermatology at the University of Washington in Seattle.
In fact, most of the dermatology programs around the country have positions available, he said.
Calvin O. McCall, M.D., who is director of the dermatology residency program at Emory University in Atlanta, said that residents often hear about the downside of academics from the faculty in their programs, but they don't hear that some of the same problems exist in private practice.
Dr. McCall, who worked in private practice for 7 years before making the switch to the academic world, said that he didn't have the chance to talk with colleagues about interesting cases or have many opportunities for teaching.
"What hit me over and over again was that I was practicing dermatology in a near vacuum," he said.