Polite Dissent

When I was a fourth year medical student looking at Family Practice residencies, I was drawn to a particular residency that was offering a hefty signing bonus. The residency program looked decent, but it was the signing bonus that I found particularly entrancing.

But then I started to wonder why a residency would offer such a large signing bonus. Other residencies offered bonuses (generally used to offset the cost of moving and housing), but this was at least an order of magnitude better. Could it be that they were trying to cover up some deficiencies in their program by diverting the attention with the cash? Or maybe the bonus was the only way they could recruit residents? Did I really want my fellow residents to be the sort of people who are motivately mostly by money?

Eventually I decided that the risk wasn’t worth it, so I took that residency off of my list. It turned out to be a wise decision. I later met a handful of students who had rotated there and several doctors who had spent time there. None of them had anything good to say; serious problems with the program existed at almost every level. I was right to trust my instincts.

A similar situation happened in the office today. A prospective patient offered us a cash bonus to take him on as a patient. This simply can’t be a good sign. What sort of patient needs to bribe a doctor to be his physician?

I think I’ll pass.