For fans of HBO’sThe Pitt, the only thing more tragic than watching our favorite emotionally traumatized emergency room mavericks struggle to manage a mass casualty event isfinding out how little they’re getting paid to do it.TV’s newest medical obsessionhasquickly earned a reputation for realism, introducing audiences to high-stakes procedures and heart-pounding crises that are just as complex as the characters who undertake them. It’s why the show and its cast – a stacked lineup of TV vets likeNoah Wyle,Katherine LaNasa, andShawn Hatosy,joined by talented rookies inTaylor Dearden,Isa Briones,Gerran Howell, andShabana Azeez– just nabbed some well-earnedEmmy noms. It’s also why we can’t stop thinking about their paychecks, not the ones the actors are taking home, but the fictional receipts of thepoor, beleaguered doctors of the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Hospital. (Because there’s no earthly way they’re getting paid what they’re worth.)
From fentanyl overdoses to pediatric drownings, potential measles outbreaks, and violent psychiatric holds,the doctors ofThe Pittget a front-row seat to the worst day of their patients’ livesin the show’s first season. They work backbreaking hours, juggling multiple disasters (both professional and personal), and making on-the-fly diagnoses, all while bearing the brunt of an American healthcare system running on fumes. The show doesn’t shy away from any of the more uncomfortable realities of life as an ER doctor, so it’s only fair that we do the same. Is reducing the scrub-covered heroics of Dr. “Robby” Robinavich to dollars and cents a bit gauche? Maybe, but if you’ve ever watchedThe Pittand thought, “They don’t get paid enough for this,” you’re absolutely right, and we’ve got the trauma-to-paycheck breakdown to prove it.
Every Episode of ‘The Pitt’ Season 1, Ranked
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Attending Doctors on ‘The Pitt’: Big Salaries, Bigger Breakdowns
In terms of hospital hierarchy, no one is higher on the food chain than the attendings.Doctors likeRobby (Wyle), Abbott (Hatosy), and John Shen (Ken Kirby) are the most experienced, and normally the best paid, workers on the emergency room floor.That’s because they’ve completed their residencies, earned their license to practice, and now supervise residents. Every treatment decision runs through them, meaning they’re not only responsible for diagnosing, triaging, and discharging, but they’re also mentoring burnt-out interns and absorbing the blame from hospital admins when things go wrong. They’reglorified crisis managers in white coats, and they deserve a raise.
Dr. “Robby” Robinavich
Title:Chief Attending, Head of Holding It Together
Estimated Real-World Salary:~$392,000 per year
Sure,Dr. Robby’ssalary is nothing to sneer at. He can, at the very least, afford his mortgage and his avocado toast for breakfast, which is more than most millennials can say. But,when you start breaking down the tidal wave of trauma– his own and his patients’ – that he has to swim through daily,you start to question whether any amount of money is worth this much suffering. InThe Pitt’s first season, Dr. Robby plays babysitter to a slew of incoming residents and medical students still learning the ropes while battling COVID-era PTSD on the anniversary of his mentor’s death. When he’s not suppressing flashbacks while performing end-of-life care for parents who’ve lost their son to an accidental overdose, he’s intubating, diagnosing, and directing an entire department on how to handle a mass casualty event. A breakdown in the hospital’s makeshift pediatric morgue, an incel intervention gone wrong, antivaxxers, belligerent patients, and hospital admins droning on about patient satisfaction scores – it all starts to add up, making the six figures Robby is likely taking home seem like chump change.
Dr. Jack Abbot
Title:Senior Attending, Night Shift Vet
Estimated Real-World Salary:~$233,000 per year
Again, don’t let the multiple zeroes fool you;this is a man who ended one shift contemplating a suicideattempt on his workplace rooftop before starting another bytalking a coworker down from that very same ledge. No amount of money is going to cover those kinds of therapy bills. Still, Dr. Abbot, the show’s resident night-shift vet, manages to do theliteral mostwith the amount of screen time he’s given in Season 1, tapping into his military training to help his understaffed ER handle the influx of shooting casualties during the PittFest massacre. His composure in the midst of chaos andhis rebel-with-a-cause style of medicinemake him a reassuring force on the emergency room floor, but is he paid enough? Considering, over the course of just one shift, he wrote a death letter for another soldier’s grieving family, faked an ultrasound to help a young girl receive a medical abortion,strapped his own blood bag to his body so he could donate while treating patients, anddid all of this on a prosthetic leg, you tell us.
How Much Do ‘The Pitt’s Residents Make, and Is It Worth the Trauma?
Being a resident onThe Pittmeans you’re technically a doctor, emotionally a wreck, and financially a debt-ridden mess.Constantly stressed and perpetually sleep-deprived, doctors likeFrank Langdon (Patrick Ball), Heather Collins (Tracy Ifeachor), Samira Mohan (Supriya Ganesh), Cassie McKay (Fiona Dourif), Melissa “Mel” King (Dearden), and Trinity Santos (Briones) are, on paper, paid fairly well. But, once you realize their secondary jobs include serving as psychological punching bags for patients, grief sponges for families, encyclopedic founts of knowledge for med students, and scapegoats for attendings, the money matters less. They stitch, sprint, and spiral, usually all in the same shift, and yet, they make the same as an Applebee’s manager? Make it make sense.
Dr. Heather Collins, Dr. Frank Langdon
Title:Senior Resident, Powerless AssistantToThe Regional Manager
Estimated Real-World Salary:~$77,000 per year
Dr. Frank Langdon and Dr. Heather Collins areThe Pitt’smost senior residents, which means they serve as the right hand for attendings like Dr. Robby, and the on-call teachers for less-experienced docs and students operating in the hospital’s emergency department. A loose cannon with a gift for nailing differential diagnoses on the first try, Dr. Langdon can handle a crisis just fine – as long as he has a prescription pad handy. Thefinal episodes of the show forced him into a career-ending admission: he’d been stealing patients’ benzos to help him wean off a nasty drug habit. But, considering he’s making just $18 an hour to plug bullet holes and pry open collapsed airways, his need for a medicated break from reality every once in a while feels understandable.Hissalary might sound questionable, but Dr. Collins’ take-home pay seemsdownright insulting, especially considering shesuffered a devastating miscarriagein the employees’ bathroom midway through the season before jumping right back into the fray. Capable and compassionate, Collins is one of the few doctors who balances following protocol with practicing humane care. Her bi-weekly paycheck shouldn’t be less than the cost of a ticket toBeyonce’sCowboy Carter tour.
Dr. Samira Mohan
Title:Third-Year Resident, The Artist Formerly Known As “Slo-Mo”
Estimated Real-World Salary:~$72,000 per year
If operating on the emergency room floor were a race, Dr. Mohan would be the tortoise. Slow, steady, and stuck on getting a patient’s full history before making a diagnosis, Mohan has a rough start to her shift. Dr. Robby constantly berates her for spending too much time talking and not enough time testing, but those extra minutes often add up to a better outcome for the people she’s assigned to help. And, by the end ofThe Pitt’sfirst season,she’s the doctor who shows the most growth,graduating from routine intubations to aspirating air from a patient’s heartusing a 5 French pigtail catheterand solving a young woman’s psychiatric breakdown by taking on Big Lotion. Can you really put a price on that? Well, yes, and it should at least be enough green to cover an end-of-year Sephora haul.
Dr. Melissa King, Dr. Cassie McKay
Title:Second-Year Resident
Estimated Real-World Salary:~$69,000 per year
No longer the terrified newbies but still very much in the trauma trenches, second-year residents likeDr. Mel KingandDr. Cassie McKaydon’t just teach; theydo, performing intricate procedures under the guidance of more senior physicians while serving as simulators for their younger cohorts. It’s a strange balance to strike, made even more impossible given the dumpster fire of a day both Dr. King and Dr. McKay have during Season 1 ofThe Pitt. Shackled to an ankle monitor whose battery dies at the most inopportune time, McKay spends most of her shift hand-holding a medical student who faints at the sight of blood while worrying over the status of a potential school shooter. She saves a surrogate mother’s life during a difficult birth, tries to rescue a sex-trafficking victim, and has to play nurse to an incompetent ex in the midst of a once-in-a-career kind of disaster. But her coworker, Dr. King, doesn’t have it much better. Fresh from a stint at the VA hospital, Mel King is just settling into the ED’s breakneck rhythm when she’s tasked with handling a possible amputation, a patient on the spectrum, delivering devastating news to a little girl whose sister just drowned, and internalizing the emotional toll of being the only doctor seemingly paying attention to her patients’ needs. A dance break toMegan Thee Stallioncan only help so much.
Dr. Trinity Santos
Title:Intern, Chest-Tube Obsessive, MDMA Whisperer
Estimated Real-World Salary:~$67,000 per year
Trinity Santosis technically still learning where the supply closets are, but her compulsive need to perform a chest tube on any patient unlucky enough to waltz into her ER makes her asurprisingly good addition to The Pitt’s teamduring a mass shooting event. Unafraid to challenge the authority of Langdon or to threaten a sexual predator strapped to a gurney,Santos is over-eager, overconfident, and, in many ways, totally unlikable. So what?She saved a patient’s life during an overdose, uncovered a doctor’s illegal drug pilfering scheme, and shoved a balloon in someone’s aorta on the fly. Not bad for someone whose ID badge still says, “Hi, I’m new here!”
What Med Students on ‘The Pitt’ Go Through Before They Even Get Paid
Before they’re even allowed to prescribe over-the-counter ibuprofen, the medical students ofThe Pittare elbows deep in trauma. They’re unpaid and, during PittFest shootings, unsupervised, expected to quickly observe and mirror the treatment techniques of doctors with decades more experience. Betweengetting drenched in human fluids, collapsing at the sight of blood, battling panic attacks, losing patients, and facingego-zapping nepotism accusations,these literal children are getting a crash course in medicine with nothing in their bank accounts to show for it.
Victoria Javadi, Dennis Whitaker
Title:Med Students
Estimated Real-World Salary:$0
If residency is a trial by fire, then medical school onThe Pittis a full-body dunk into a bubbling volcanic crater just begging to erupt. Students likeVictoria Javadi(Azeez) and Dennis Whitaker (Howell)perform some of the same life-saving procedures as their senior residents, butthey do it pro bono. In fact, according to the welcome letter of every medical school, these kids should be thanking the overrun healthcare system for the chance to fashion DIY chest tubes during mass casualty events and get on a first-name basis with every possible bodily fluid while catching rats and squatting in their hospital’s construction zone – not demanding more, or really just any, pay. Javadi can’t even afford the end-of-shift beer she’s technically not of age to consume, andWhitaker’s so broke, he’s now living with a coworkerwho verbally harassed him during his shift. This is why stipends exist.
The Nurses of ‘The Pitt’: The Unsung, Underpaid MVPs
OnThe Pitt, the nurses don’t just clock in;they keep the entire emergency floor running 24 hours a day, seven days a week.They’re slightly unhinged miracle workers who do everything from consoling terrified med students to dodging bodily fluids and racist patients without missing a beat. They may not get the prestige or pay of the doctors, but they’ve got sharper instincts and a knack for striking a healthier work-life balance.
Dana Evans
Title:Charge Nurse, Trauma Concierge
Estimated Real-World Salary:~$80,000
If grace under pressure were a billable skill, Dana (LaNasa) would be the highest-paid person in that hospital. Instead, she’s holding the line (and holding everyone else’s emotional baggage) on a vending machine budget. As the Charge Nurse at Pittsburgh Trauma,Dana is one-woman triage unit, coordinating care, managing chaos, and occasionally getting punched during her smoke breaks. In just one season, she’s comforted a co-worker through a miscarriage, kept the ED humming during a mass casualty event, and played therapist to her chief attending during his mental breakdown.The hospital should be thankful that emotional labor isn’t taxable, becauseDana Evanswould be cleaning The Pitt out at this point.
Jesse, Donnie, Kim, Perlah, Princess, Mateo
Title:Nurses, Swiss Army Knives In Scrubs
Estimated Real-World Salary:~$68,000 per year
Thenurses onThe Pittare the metaphorical glue – the Dermabond kind – holding this hemorrhaging house of cards together. They’re people like Kim (Ambar Martinez) who comfort med students by scavenging fresh scrubs before disappearing for the rest of the season. They’re good Samaritans like Donnie, always on-call to administer extra epinephrine or provide a post-shift cooler full of beer. They’re gossip queens like Perlah (Amielynn Abellera) and Princess (Kristin Villanueva), gabbing in Tagalong while chasing down naked patients and dispensing free sandwiches to starving med students. And they’re guys like Mateo (Jalen Thomas Brooks), restocking ortho lockers while running interference with racist patients out in chairs.If they were paid for every job they performed, they’d be out-earning the chief attendings.
The Pitt is a medical drama developed by veterans of the television series ER. The series will follow healthcare workers set in Pittsburgh, showing he challenges faced in the modern-day United States by nurses, doctors, and other medical professionals.
