Why rheumatology residents need to learn personal finance?

Abstract

BACKGROUNDThere is an evident lack of Personal Finance knowledge among physicians from all over the world. In Brazil, Personal Finance was recently included at the National Base Common Curriculum and it is slowly gaining some spotlights at the media, but not in medical school curriculum or residency programs. In fact, physicians could be one of the worst savers and budgeters in the working population in some countries as United States of America. During the resident years, medical fellows are subjected to a 60-h-week study and work programs, receiving a low income of residency's grants-a payment much below the floor established by the medical category, which brings difficulties those physicians. Besides this, after graduation, many students from private medical schools have a huge student loan debt and need to complement the incomes working even more during their residency programs to compensate their loans. METHODSThis literature review used PubMed and SciELO databases, included the keywords "personal finances," "economic," "debt," "student loans," matching with "rheumatologist," "rheumatologist student," "medical resident," "resident," "medical student," "student," in English, Portuguese and Spanish languages. RESULTSThere are not studies evaluating Personal Finance knowledge or personal finance educational projects among Brazilian's medical or rheumatology residents, not even rheumatology residents worldwide. Although this gap of knowledge, there are some data obtained from groups of physical medicine and rehabilitation, emergency medicine, pediatric, plastic surgery, internal medicine and surgery residents analyzing this subject. In all studies available there was an evident lack of knowledge about basic personal finance in these groups, but the majority of the trainees wanted to learn more about this topic, and when this education was provided, their well-being improved not just in the personal finance specter, as in mental and emotional circles. In the other hand, medical residents with poor financial knowledge and/or with financial debts were associated with increased risk of stress, depression and burnout syndrome. CONCLUSIONPersonal Finance must be discussed in the formation of the rheumatologist's residents at residence programs as soon as possible. Learning to deal with shortage of financial power, as school debts and many other possible debts, and looking forward to a better retirement plan since the early career can provide a better life quality to trainees and prevent mismanagements that could create devastating effects in short and long term on financial and psychosocial health.