“Our goal is to make the general public aware,” Armin Tadayyon, MD, MBA, an anesthesiology resident at UB and union member, told MedPage Today. “The general public thinks doctors are rich, but they have no idea what a resident physician is. We put it out there that residents are making less than minimum wage. It challenges the [image] that the public has.”
Tadayyon said residents “aren’t making a livable wage in Buffalo, and we are hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt” from student loans.
“They’re the lowest residency salaries in New York, around $58,000 or $59,000 per year,” Stuart Bussey, MD, JD, president of UAPD, told MedPage Today. “If you divide that by 80 to 100 hours per week, it’s below minimum wage.”