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How much money do doctors make an hour?

They say that doctors make a ton of money.

And some really do.

But after you take into consideration the many long hours that they put into education and refining their skills and knowledge, some would say that its relatively fair compensation for what they have to go through to be able to fix us when things go horribly wrong physically.

Really, would you want a doctor that wasn’t highly compensated taking care of your body?

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That’s the philosophy behind THIS ANALYSIS OF DOCTOR SALARIES that Dr Ben Brown has thrown together.

In this piece, he analyzes the number of working hours for various medical professions (nurses, doctors, etc) and breaks down the total amount of money earned over the course of their career.  A little bit of long-division, and you get the result of THE AVERAGE HOURLY WAGE FOR A MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL.

So with a projected lifetime net income of $3.4 million — based on an average salary of $62,450 per year), a nurse has to take into account the $53,000 in student loan debt and the total number of hours worked (both regular hours and overtime hours).   Carry the one, and presto – we learn that the average nurse earns just $24.43 per hour over the course of his or her career.

Doing the same math for dentists (who earn an average of about $149,000 a year) – taking out school costs and figuring out the number of hours worked again, we see that the average dentist’s hourly wage is about $61.91.

Internal medicine doctors earn an average of $141,000 a year.  (What, dentists make more than internal medicine docs? Whoa!).  Lots of complicated math later and we end up with a doctor’s hourly wage checking in at $34.46 per hour.

How does that make you feel?  Are doctors still overpaid compared to other professions?