Resident physician means still in training after med school. They get paid $45-60k/year for on avg 60-80hr work weeks for 3-5 years depending on specialty. So yeah perk it’s a salary. Break it down and it’s like $12-15/hr for someone who likely has a $250k+ student loan debt plus other expenses who is grossly underpaid and overworked and has to deal with life or death decisions all the time and be on top of their game while working a maximum 28hr shift per ACGME guidelines so they don’t burn out too quickly. 80hr limitations occurred because it was common for resident physicians to work 120hrs or more. Deadly mistakes were made in the past so they clamped down on it a bit, but 80-90hrs a week is very common even to this day. Hence they are called “residents” of the hospital and practically lived there.

Once you graduate, salary jumps dramatically but residents are exploited for cheap labor within our healthcare system and just wanted to point this out. Media and Reddit makes physicians out to look like fat cats who are lazy greedy money grubbing assholes who doing nothing but get paid big bucks by big pharma, but the reality is they sacrifice so much of their early years to the field of medicine that many the slightly higher salary doesn’t come close to justify the years of sacrifice they endured which is why physicians commit suicide at a higher rate vs general population (same with dentists).