The Pay Gap in Medicine Is Real. Dr. Pamela Buchanan Is Done Being Quiet About It
How I Doctor with Dr. Graham Walker
Outro
Dr. Graham Walker closes the episode, thanks Pamela, and previews where to find the podcast and Offcall.
Dr. Pamela Buchanan is an emergency physician, author, founder of Melanated Medicine, and one of the most candid voices in medicine on the things doctors aren't supposed to talk about.
In this episode of How I Doctor, Dr. Graham Walker sits down with Pamela to have the conversation most physicians have been trained their entire careers to avoid.
What does it actually cost to stay silent about pay?
What happens when a colleague throws a stethoscope on the ground and tells you that you're worth more than you're making? What does it feel like to be called the N-word by a patient you treat anyway?
Pamela doesn't flinch. She talks about the $100,000 pay gap Black women physicians face even when matched for the same role. She walks through the moment a friend told her to rip up a signed contract — and the $75,000 sign-on bonus that landed in her bank account 48 hours later. She speaks openly about burnout, depression, and the mental health crisis medicine refuses to name. And she makes the case that the silence around all of it isn't accidental.
This isn't a conversation about victimhood. It's a diagnosis of a broken system and a blueprint for every physician who's ever stayed quiet too long.
What You'll Learn
- Why pay transparency in medicine isn't just taboo, and why Pamela believes the silence is intentional
- How two candid conversations with colleagues changed her financial trajectory permanently
- What to say, what to ask, and what to refuse when you're sitting across from someone offering you a contract
- How racism shows up on shift — not occasionally, but every single day — and what it costs to absorb it alone
- What Melanated Medicine is, why Pamela built it, and what happens when Black women physicians finally find each other
- Why asking for help — professional, domestic, emotional — is not weakness but math
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