Dermatopathology — Specialty Profile

Exploratory, not prescriptive. This profile blends hard data (pay, match rates, burnout, demographics, each sourced and dated) with generalizations and synthesized opinion about culture and "who fits." It's here to help you get curious and go find out for yourself, not to tell you who to become. Numbers marked ⟳ verify change every year; check the linked source before you quote one. Last reviewed: 2026-08-04.

Also called: dermpath, DP, skin pathology. A 1-year ACGME-accredited fellowship entered after either a pathology residency or a dermatology residency, not a residency you match into from medical school. Organ system: skin, read down a microscope rather than looked at across a room.

Subspecialty fellowship of Pathology, and of Dermatology.

The 30-second version

Dermatopathology is the diagnosis of skin disease from tissue, and it holds a structural oddity found almost nowhere else in medicine: one fellowship, one certificate, jointly issued by two different member boards, reachable from two residencies that could hardly be less alike. A dermatologist and a pathologist finish entirely different four-year training programs, walk into the same one-year fellowship, sit the same examination, and receive a certificate co-sponsored by the American Board of Pathology and the American Board of Dermatology. What they then do is read skin biopsies, which is one of the highest-volume diagnostic workloads in medicine, because a dermatologist can generate a dozen specimens in a morning and skin cancer is the most common cancer in the United States. The intellectual core is pattern recognition at a level of granularity that outsiders underestimate: inflammatory dermatoses that look identical clinically separate cleanly under the microscope, and melanoma diagnosis carries some of the highest diagnostic stakes and highest interobserver disagreement in all of pathology. The trade at the center of the field: a controllable, high-volume, well-compensated microscope career, entered through a gate whose difficulty depends enormously on which of the two doors you came through.

Quick dashboard (details and sources below)
Training after med school 5 years (4 yr AP/CP pathology or 4 yr dermatology, including intern year, + 1 yr dermatopathology fellowship)
Total from college start ~13 years (4 undergrad + 4 med school + 4 residency + 1 fellowship)
Training chain Med school (4) → Pathology (4) or Dermatology (3 + intern year) → 1 yr ACGME dermatopathology fellowship → joint ABPath / ABD certificate
Competitiveness Depends entirely on the door. Via pathology, one of the more accessible fields; via dermatology, gated behind one of the hardest matches in medicine ⟳
Typical full-time pay Inferred from pathology · no direct data. No survey publishes dermatopathology. Pathology as a whole runs $394,000 (Medscape 2026) to $373,384 (Doximity 2025), and this field reasons out above it ⟳
Pay vs. parent (general pathology) Above, on the mechanism rather than on a measurement. One dermatopathologist described the 2022 hiring cycle publicly — a $450,000 starting offer, a $350,000 floor among path-trained fellows — and that is one person, four years ago ⟳
Lifestyle Microscope-based, daytime, weekday, essentially no call. Among the most controllable careers in medicine ⟳
Burnout No subspecialty figure; parent pathology is 28.3% against a 41.9% all-physician average (AMA 2025), third-lowest of the rows it names ⟳
% women 50.7% of dermatopathology fellows (ACGME, AY2024-25); no practicing-workforce figure. Parent pathology 44% practicing, parent dermatology 53% (AAMC, 2022 data) ⟳
DO / IMG accessibility Entirely determined by the door: of positions filled in the 2026 Main Match, pathology took 19.6% DO and 34.7% IMG; dermatology took 7.3% DO and 2.4% IMG ⟳

What they actually do

Dermatopathologists render diagnoses on skin specimens. The workload divides into three broad categories, and the proportions vary enormously with practice setting.

Neoplastic skin pathology is the volume. Basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma, and the enormous population of benign and atypical melanocytic lesions submitted to exclude melanoma. Skin cancer is the most common cancer in the United States, and every excision and shave biopsy generates a specimen that someone must read. This is the bread and butter, and it is high-throughput work.

Melanocytic lesions are the hard part, and they deserve their own sentence. Distinguishing a dysplastic nevus from an early melanoma is among the most consequential and least reproducible judgments in diagnostic medicine, with documented interobserver disagreement between experienced pathologists on the same slide. The field is candid about this, uses second opinions heavily, and has developed ancillary molecular tests precisely because morphology alone does not always resolve it.

Inflammatory dermatopathology is the intellectual core. Psoriasis, lichen planus, lupus, the bullous diseases, drug eruptions, and the granulomatous disorders all have recognizable histologic architecture, and the discipline of reading them, meaning where in the skin the inflammation sits and what it is doing to the structures around it, is what practitioners tend to describe as the beautiful part of the field.

Representative work: microscopic examination and reporting of skin biopsies, excisions, and re-excisions · immunohistochemistry selection and interpretation · direct immunofluorescence for bullous and connective tissue disease · molecular ancillary testing on ambiguous melanocytic lesions · frozen section for selected cases · consultation on outside cases, which is a large share of academic practice · clinicopathologic correlation, meaning conversation with the clinician who took the biopsy · alopecia and nail specimens, which are their own sub-genre requiring specific sectioning.1

A day in the life: a slide tray and a microscope, and considerable autonomy over how the day runs. Cases are previewed, dictated or typed, and signed out, with a share held for immunostains, deeper levels, or a colleague's opinion. In a private laboratory the volume is high and the workflow industrialized; in an academic department there is more consultation work, more teaching, and more time per difficult case. Digital pathology has begun to change this substantially, since whole-slide imaging allows remote sign-out, and dermatopathology has been among the faster adopters because the specimens are small and the images manageable.

The clinicopathologic conversation is what distinguishes the field from general surgical pathology. A good dermatopathologist talks to dermatologists constantly, and the ones who trained through dermatology bring the clinical picture with them in a way that changes how they read a slide.

On call: essentially none. This is a weekday, daytime specialty with no overnight obligation, which is among the strongest quality-of-life features in medicine.

The training path & time to completion

Two doors, one fellowship, one certificate.

Door one, via pathology: medical school (4 yrs) → anatomic and clinical pathology residency (4 yrs) → 1-year ACGME dermatopathology fellowship.

Door two, via dermatology: medical school (4 yrs) → intern year → dermatology residency (3 yrs) → 1-year ACGME dermatopathology fellowship.12

  • The fellowship is one year and ACGME-accredited, and the certificate it leads to is issued jointly by the American Board of Pathology and the American Board of Dermatology. ABPath lists dermatopathology among its eleven subspecialty certifications and explicitly notes the dermatology co-sponsorship.2 Very few certificates in American medicine are shared between two boards this way.
  • You must finish your primary training first. ABPath requires completion of all primary certification training requirements before beginning dermatopathology fellowship training, so this is not a fellowship you enter partway through residency.2
  • Total from the start of college: about 13 years by either door.

The two doors are not equivalent, and this is the most important thing on this page. Reaching this fellowship through pathology means clearing one of the more accessible residencies in American medicine, which took 19.6% DO and 34.7% IMG of the positions it filled in the 2026 Main Match.3 Reaching it through dermatology means clearing one of the hardest matches there is, near-closed to DO and IMG applicants, with a research and mentorship arms race attached.4 The fellowship is the same. The path to it differs by an enormous margin, and if dermatopathology is what you want, the pathology route is dramatically more attainable.

What differs after the fellowship is subtler. Dermatology-trained dermatopathologists can and often do maintain a clinical practice alongside sign-out, which pathology-trained ones cannot, and that dual practice is a real career option. Pathology-trained dermatopathologists carry general surgical pathology competence, which makes them more flexible in a laboratory that needs broader coverage. Neither is better; they are different products.

How competitive is it?

No published match rate exists, and until recently pathology fellowship recruitment had no match at all, which is itself the story.

  • Pathology fellowship recruitment is being reformed right now. The College of American Pathologists signed a joint statement, proposed by the Association for Academic Pathology's Fellowship Directors Committee, calling for a fairer and more transparent recruitment process. Four subspecialties committed to a match for the 2026–27 academic year: hematopathology, molecular genetic pathology, forensic pathology, and bone and soft tissue pathology. The statement encourages others to join the 2027 cycle, placing fellows for 2028–29.5 Dermatopathology is not among the four that have committed, so as of now it recruits on the old model. ⟳
  • The old model is the problem the reform names. Recruitment shifted earlier and earlier in residency, often requiring residents to commit before they had experienced many subspecialty rotations, and pushing offers before interviews finished. 85% of residents say they prefer a later, unified timeline.6
  • From the dermatology side the picture is different, because the filter was the residency. Derm residents who want dermatopathology are competing in a much smaller pool for a subspecialty their own field regards as a legitimate destination.

The honest read. Through pathology, dermatopathology is one of the more sought-after fellowships in a specialty that is itself accessible, so it is competitive relative to its siblings but reachable. Through dermatology, the fellowship is straightforward and the residency was the mountain. Either way, the recruitment timing is genuinely unfair right now and the profession is trying to fix it.

Board: subspecialty certification in dermatopathology, jointly sponsored by ABPath and ABD, after one year of ACGME-accredited fellowship.2

Compensation — the robust version

No survey publishes dermatopathology. Medscape and Doximity both stop at "pathology," MGMA's per-specialty medians are paywalled, and no society survey fills the gap. The figures that circulate under this field's name, including the $249,000–$460,000 range this page carried until August 2026, all trace to one undated third-party compilation of Salary.com, Glassdoor and Bureau of Labor Statistics data. What disqualifies it is not the ingredient list: its own overall pathologist average sits $28,000 below what Medscape published for the same earnings year, which is the clearest available sign that it is not reporting what it claims to report. The range is gone rather than softened.7

The parent anchor is measured. Medscape's 2026 report puts the pathologist average at $394,000 (2025 earnings) and Doximity's 2025 report puts it at $373,384 (2024 earnings). The two disagree by about 5%, so quote one and name it.7 ⟳

The honest anchor, and the reasoning. Start at those figures and reason upward, because the mechanism is specific and checkable. Skin biopsies are numerous, small, and quick to read relative to complex resections, so a high-throughput dermatopathology practice scales in a way most diagnostic subspecialties cannot. Dermatology groups also frequently own their own laboratories, which creates an ownership route to income that general pathology often lacks. How far above general pathology that lands you is unknown, and nobody has measured it. Reasoning, not a measurement.

What one practitioner said in public, which is not the same thing as data. In December 2022 a dermatopathologist described that year's hiring cycle on Student Doctor Network: a $450,000 starting offer, and $350,000 as the lowest offer they knew of among path-trained dermatopathology fellows that season. That is one person, describing a market nearly four years old, in a public forum. It is here because it is the only concrete thing anyone has said in the open about what this field pays, and it should be read as one person's account rather than as a range you can plan against.8

The counterweight. The same high-volume private model that produces the upper end is the subject of ongoing debate about specimen self-referral, reading volumes, and diagnostic care. Academic dermatopathology, where the hardest melanocytic consultation work happens, pays considerably less. The spread is wide because the practice models are genuinely different jobs sharing a name, and which one you take will move your income more than the fellowship did.

Limited-data caveat: no MGMA, Doximity or Medscape dermatopathology line exists. The direction, meaning above general pathology, follows from how the work is billed and is consistent across everything written about the field; the magnitude has never been measured. Benchmark against the parent pathology figures and against the specific practice model you are being offered. ⟳

Lifestyle

This is among the most controllable careers in medicine, and the reasons are structural.

  • No call, no nights, no weekends in most practices. Specimens accumulate during the day and are read during the day.
  • Parent pathology is already a daytime, weekday specialty with little traditional call, which the parent profile names as one of its defining advantages.3
  • The work is individually paced. A slide tray is not a waiting room, and a dermatopathologist has real control over the order and rhythm of the day within a turnaround-time expectation.
  • Digital pathology has made remote work genuinely possible, more so here than in most diagnostic fields, because dermatopathology specimens are small and whole-slide images are manageable. Remote and hybrid sign-out arrangements exist and are growing.
  • Part-time is viable, since the work divides cleanly by case volume rather than by patient panel or operating schedule.
  • The counterweight is volume pressure. A high-throughput laboratory sets expectations in cases per day, and that is the form the intensity takes here: not unpredictability, but sustained cognitive output against a queue that refills.

Lifestyle rating: 5/5. Daytime, weekday, callless, remote-capable, and part-time-viable, with the only real deduction being sustained volume expectations rather than any schedule burden.

Wellbeing — the part to take seriously

No dermatopathology-specific wellbeing data exists. Inherit pathology and adjust.

Burnout inherits pathology, which is among the lowest of the specialties the AMA's 2025 Organizational Biopsy names, at 28.3% against a 41.9% all-physician average.3 The drivers of that placement, meaning controllable hours, no call, and no emergency exposure, all hold here. ⟳

The distinctive stress in this field is diagnostic rather than emotional, and it is specific. A melanoma call made on a slide determines whether a patient has a wide local excision and a sentinel node biopsy, and the reproducibility of that call between experienced pathologists is imperfect. Practitioners live with the knowledge that a case they signed as a dysplastic nevus might be read differently by a colleague, and that the consequence of being wrong in either direction is real. The field manages this with second opinions, consultation practice, and molecular adjuncts, and it talks about it openly, which is healthier than the alternative.

The absence of patients cuts both ways. Some people find the removal from bedside medicine liberating and describe the microscope as the purest form of the diagnostic craft. Others miss the patients and find the isolation wearing, particularly in a high-volume laboratory where the day can pass with little professional conversation. This is worth testing on a rotation rather than reasoning about, because people's reactions to it differ sharply and predictably little.

The volume model deserves an honest mention. A career reading a very large number of similar specimens is repetitive by design, and the intellectual interest concentrates in a minority of cases. Practitioners who thrive describe the inflammatory and melanocytic work as what sustains them; those who leave usually cite the routine.

Who's in the field (demographics)

Subspecialty-specific data is thin, and the two-door structure makes inheritance ambiguous.

  • Women: the trainee figure exists and the practicing one does not. ACGME counted 71 dermatopathology fellows across 58 programs in academic year 2024-25, of whom 36 were women, 50.7%.9 That sits below pathology residents at 54.7% and well below dermatology residents at 65.3%, so the fellowship does not simply land between its two parents on this axis.34 Nobody publishes a figure for practicing dermatopathologists. A 2025 analysis of demographic trends among Mohs and dermatopathology fellows from 2010 to 2024 documents a continued rise in women fellows.10 ⟳
  • DO and IMG: this is where the two doors diverge most sharply. Pathology is among the most open specialties in medicine at 19.6% DO and 34.7% IMG of the positions it filled in the 2026 Main Match. Dermatology is among the least open, at 7.3% DO and 2.4% IMG of the same cycle.34 A dermatopathology fellowship therefore contains people who reached it by two routes with radically different accessibility, and the pathology-trained cohort is substantially more diverse on these axes than the dermatology-trained one. ⟳
  • Underrepresented in medicine: no reliable subspecialty figure. Dermatology is among the least racially diverse specialties in medicine, with Black dermatologists at roughly 4.6% and Hispanic or Latinx at roughly 6.6%, and dermatopathology inherits that from one of its two parents.4 ⟳

Culture, personality & the online stereotypes

Who gravitates here: people who liked the microscope and liked skin. From the pathology side, residents who found dermatopathology the most visually satisfying rotation and wanted a subspecialty with high volume and clear demand. From the dermatology side, residents who found themselves more interested in what the biopsy showed than in the clinic that produced it. The field rewards visual pattern recognition, tolerance for ambiguity, and a willingness to be definitively wrong in public occasionally. As always, plenty of people in the field do not fit any single mold.

The stereotypes. Community perception rather than fact, each with a kernel and an unfair edge:

  • "The dermatologists who did not want patients." Aimed at the derm-trained half. The kernel is that some dermatology residents genuinely prefer diagnostic work. The unfair edge is that many derm-trained dermatopathologists keep a clinical practice, and the dual role is a recognized career rather than a retreat.
  • "The best-paid pathologists." Broadly supported by the available figures, and the reason is high-volume private laboratory work rather than the difficulty of the diagnoses.7
  • "Two boards, one certificate, and a lot of turf." The joint ABPath and ABD sponsorship is unusual, and the relationship between the two parent specialties over who should read skin biopsies has been a live professional dispute for decades. The certificate is the truce.
  • "Melanoma is a coin flip." Unfair and not baseless. Interobserver variability in melanocytic lesions is well documented, and the field's own use of second opinions and molecular testing is the response to it. The caricature ignores that most cases are not ambiguous at all.

What people say online (synthesized and paraphrased, not quotes): across trainee and physician forums, dermatopathology reads as one of the most desirable fellowships in pathology and a comfortable, well-regarded option in dermatology. From the pathology side, the recurring themes are that it is competitive relative to other pathology fellowships, that the job market is good, and that the private-lab pay is real but the practice model varies enormously in how pleasant it is. A second, sharper thread concerns the two-door structure, with pathology-trained posters occasionally noting that derm-trained dermatopathologists have less general histology grounding and derm-trained posters noting that they bring the clinical picture. The exchange is more collegial than that summary suggests. A third and increasingly loud thread is fellowship recruitment timing, with widespread frustration that residents must commit before they have seen the subspecialties, which is precisely what the CAP-backed match reform is aimed at.56 A fourth is digital pathology and remote sign-out, discussed with more enthusiasm here than in most of pathology.

Voices from the field. Paraphrased from published sources, with links to the originals:

  • ABPath lists dermatopathology among eleven subspecialty certifications and notes it is offered in cooperation with the American Board of Dermatology, with completion of all primary certification training required before fellowship begins.2
  • The College of American Pathologists and the Association for Academic Pathology are pushing pathology fellowship recruitment toward a unified match, with four subspecialties committed for 2026–27 and an invitation to others for the 2027 cycle; the CAP president describes recruitment as having shifted so early that residents commit before experiencing many subspecialty areas, and reports that 85% of residents prefer a later unified timeline.56
  • A 2025 JAAD analysis of demographic trends among Mohs and dermatopathology fellows from 2010 to 2024 documents a continued rise in the proportion of women fellows.10

Why people choose it / why people leave

Why choose it: among the most controllable lives in medicine, with no call, weekday hours, and real remote-work potential · consistently among pathology's better-paid subspecialties · genuinely beautiful pattern-based diagnosis, particularly in inflammatory disease · high and durable demand, since skin cancer is the most common cancer in the country · two entry doors, one of them through a very accessible residency · a strong digital-pathology future · a one-year fellowship, so the opportunity cost is small.

Why leave or avoid it: high-volume repetitive work where the interesting cases are a minority · diagnostic stakes in melanocytic lesions with documented interobserver variability · no patient contact, which some people miss badly · a private-laboratory model with ongoing questions about specimen self-referral and reading volumes · unreliable compensation data, making offers hard to benchmark · fellowship recruitment timing that currently forces early commitment.

Best fit if: the microscope was the part of medicine you liked most · you have strong visual pattern recognition · you want a controllable, callless career · you can hold diagnostic ambiguity without it eating you · you want a short fellowship with a clear job market.

Not for you if: you need patients · repetitive high-volume work would wear you down · you want procedural or bedside medicine · being second-guessed on a difficult call would be hard to carry · you want a clean, well-surveyed salary benchmark before you commit.

The FLI angle — Dermatopathology for first-gen, low-income & immigrant students

Where it fits FLI realities well:

  • The pathology door is one of the most accessible high-value routes in all of medicine, and this is the single most useful fact on this page for an FLI reader. Pathology took 19.6% DO and 34.7% IMG of the positions it filled in the 2026 Main Match, among the most open specialties there is.3 Dermatology took 7.3% DO and 2.4% IMG.4 The fellowship and the certificate are identical. If dermatopathology is what you want, the pathology route reaches the same destination through a gate that is open rather than nearly closed.
  • The lifestyle is genuinely sustainable, with no call and weekday hours, which matters if you are carrying family responsibilities alongside a career.
  • The pay is strong relative to the training length. Thirteen years from the start of college, a one-year fellowship, and compensation at the upper end of pathology.37
  • Remote and hybrid sign-out is real here, which creates geographic flexibility that most of medicine does not offer. That can mean staying near family without giving up the career.

Risks to name honestly:

  • If you go the dermatology route, you are taking on one of the least FLI-accessible matches in medicine, with a research and away-rotation arms race that costs money and requires a home department. Read the Mohs surgery profile's FLI section, which covers that gate in detail. The honest advice is that if the microscope is what you want, do not take the hard door to reach it.
  • PSLF fits the well-paid version of this career poorly. Academic dermatopathology qualifies and pays at the lower end; high-volume private and commercial laboratories generally do not qualify. As in several other fields on this site, the higher-paying path and the forgiveness path point in opposite directions, and that is a decision to make deliberately rather than discover.
  • The compensation data is genuinely bad, with published estimates for the same job differing by more than $200,000.7 Negotiating without a reliable benchmark disadvantages anyone without professional networks to ask, so find people in the field and ask them directly.
  • Volume-model laboratories vary enormously in quality of life. The same salary can come with very different daily case expectations, and that is the term to ask about specifically.

Bottom line for FLI: this is one of the few genuinely elite-outcome careers in medicine with a wide-open front door. Pathology takes DO and IMG applicants at rates almost no other high-paying specialty does, the fellowship is one year, the certificate is the same one a dermatologist earns, and the resulting life has no call and real remote potential. Choose the pathology door on purpose rather than by default, and go into contract negotiations having asked real people what the case-volume expectation is, because the published numbers will not tell you.

Fun facts

  • One certificate, two boards. Dermatopathology is co-sponsored by the American Board of Pathology and the American Board of Dermatology, which is a rarity in American medicine and the settlement of a long turf question about who reads skin biopsies.2
  • Two residencies, same destination. A pathologist and a dermatologist do entirely different four-year programs and then sit the same one-year fellowship and the same exam.2
  • The two doors have wildly different locks. In the 2026 Main Match, pathology filled 19.6% of its positions with DO applicants and 34.7% with international graduates; dermatology filled 7.3% and 2.4%.34
  • Melanoma diagnosis has measurable interobserver disagreement, which is why the field leans on second opinions and molecular adjuncts rather than pretending morphology settles everything.
  • Pathology is only now building a fellowship match. Four subspecialties committed for the 2026–27 academic year, and dermatopathology is not yet one of them.5
  • 85% of pathology residents say they would prefer a later, unified recruitment timeline than the one they currently face.6

Sources

Footnotes

  1. Fellowship structure, ACGME accreditation, length, and eligibility. Duke University Department of Pathology — Fellowship Programs: dermatopathology listed as a 1-year ACGME-accredited fellowship open to board-eligible and board-certified pathologists, alongside cytopathology (1 year, ACGME), neuropathology (2 years, ACGME), hematopathology (ACGME), molecular genetic pathology (ACGME), and a non-accredited 1-year surgical pathology fellowship. https://pathology.duke.edu/education/fellowships (accessed 2026). ↩ ↩2

  2. Board structure and certification requirements. American Board of Pathology — Subspecialty Certification: ABPath issues subspecialty certificates in blood banking/transfusion medicine, chemical pathology, clinical informatics (with the American Board of Preventive Medicine), cytopathology, dermatopathology (in cooperation with the American Board of Dermatology), forensic pathology, hematopathology, medical microbiology, molecular genetic pathology (with the American Board of Medical Genetics and Genomics), neuropathology, and pediatric pathology; candidates with ABPath primary certification, or for some subspecialties certification by another ABMS member board, may qualify after one or two years of ACGME-accredited fellowship training; completion of all primary certification training requirements is required before beginning dermatopathology fellowship training. Subspecialty exams scheduled September 8–28, 2026. https://abpath.org/subspecialty-certification/ and https://abpath.org/requirements/ (accessed 2026). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7

  3. Parent-field figures for pathology: burnout 28.3%, third-lowest of the rows the AMA names; 44% women practicing with residents at 54.7%; ~17% DO and ~36% IMG of the entering class, among the most open fields in medicine; daytime/weekday work with little traditional call. Burnout: AMA Organizational Biopsy 2025 — nearly 19,000 physician responses across 106 health systems in 38 states — puts Pathology at 28.3% against a 41.9% all-physician average, third-lowest of the rows it names, https://www.ama-assn.org/practice-management/physician-health/these-9-physician-specialties-report-highest-burnout-rates. Corrected 2026-08-17: the dashboard and the wellbeing section now lead with the AMA row rather than Medscape's ~41%. AMA is the instrument this page prefers wherever it publishes a row, because it is free, primary and current, and pathology is one of the roughly fifteen the Organizational Biopsy breaks out. The two baselines are seven points apart and never share a sentence. The Medscape reading, no longer the page's anchor: ~41% against a 49% all-physician average, Physician Burnout & Depression Report 2024 (n=9,226, fielded July–October 2023), paywalled and returning HTTP 402. Corrected 2026-08-17: this footnote described the relays as agreeing on every row and named two. Only Healthgrades Pro (https://resources.healthgrades.com/pro/the-most-and-least-burned-out-physicians-by-specialty) prints a pathology row; Advisory Board (https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2024/01/31/physician-burnout) prints six specialties and the 49% baseline, and pathology is not among them. Women practicing: AAMC, "Women are changing the face of medicine in America" (2022 data), https://www.aamc.org/news/women-are-changing-face-medicine-america, which puts anatomic and clinical pathology at 44%. Corrected 2026-08-13: this page carried ~38% for pathology. That is the all-physician average, and using it for pathology understated the field by six points. Women residents: ACGME, Data Resource Book, Academic Year 2024-2025, Table C.21, https://www.acgme.org/globalassets/pfassets/publicationsbooks/2024-2025_acgme_databook_document.pdf — pathology residents 54.7%. Corrected 2026-08-13 from "roughly half." DO and IMG shares: NRMP, Results and Data: 2026 Main Residency Match, May 2026, Table 2, https://www.nrmp.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Main_Match_Results_and_Data-2026.pdf, which puts pathology at 19.6% DO and 34.7% IMG of filled positions in 2026 — 636 offered, 634 filled, 124 DO and 220 international graduates. Corrected 2026-08-17: the correct pair was already in this footnote while the body carried an undated ~17% / ~36% in six places — the Quick dashboard, the training-path figure caption, the two-doors paragraph, Who's in the field, the FLI section's lead bullet and Fun facts. All six now carry the 2026 pair with the denominator named. NRMP 2025 gave 17.9% DO and 36.3% IMG, so the removed pair was at least two cycles old. See the pathology profile on this site for the parent picture. ⟳ ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8

  4. Parent-field figures for dermatology: 53% women practicing and 65.3% of residents; ~7% of positions to DO applicants and near-zero IMG entry; among the least racially diverse specialties, with Black dermatologists ~4.6% and Hispanic or Latinx ~6.6%; among the hardest residency matches in medicine (~99.8% filled). Women practicing: AAMC, "Women are changing the face of medicine in America" (2022 data), https://www.aamc.org/news/women-are-changing-face-medicine-america — dermatology 53%. Women residents: ACGME, Data Resource Book, Academic Year 2024-2025, Table C.21, https://www.acgme.org/globalassets/pfassets/publicationsbooks/2024-2025_acgme_databook_document.pdf, which puts dermatology residents at 65.3%. Corrected 2026-08-13: this page carried ~51–53% practicing and ~60% of residents. DO and IMG shares and fill rate: NRMP, Results and Data: 2026 Main Residency Match, May 2026, Table 2, https://www.nrmp.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Main_Match_Results_and_Data-2026.pdf — dermatology 99.8% filled, 7.3% DO and 2.4% IMG of filled PGY-2 positions. The race and ethnicity figures have no current per-specialty publisher: AAMC's last citable Diversity in Medicine by-specialty table is from 2019, and the only current figures are aggregate across all active physicians in AAMC 2025 Key Findings (2024 data), https://www.aamc.org/data-reports/data/2025-key-findings. Treat ~4.6% and ~6.6% as dated. See the dermatology and Mohs surgery profiles on this site. ⟳ ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  5. Fellowship match reform. College of American Pathologists — "CAP Supports Fellowship Match Effort, Reinforces Workforce Commitment": CAP signed a joint statement proposed by the Association for Academic Pathology (AAPath) Fellowship Directors Committee calling for a fairer, more transparent recruitment process; hematopathology, molecular genetic pathology, forensic pathology, and bone and soft tissue pathology committed to a match for the 2026–27 academic year; the statement encourages additional eligible subspecialties to join the 2027 match cycle, placing fellows for 2028–29. https://newsroom.cap.org/latest-news/cap-supports-fellowship-match-effort--reinforces-workforce-commitment/s/97304fd5-c16c-459d-a2ce-acb517b0bd06 ⟳ ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  6. The recruitment-timing problem. The Pathologist, "Fixing Fellowship Fatigue" (October 2025) — CAP President Donald Karcher on the pathology fellowship application and selection process having shifted earlier in residency, often requiring residents to commit before experiencing many subspecialty areas, with residents accepting offers under pressure before completing interviews or withdrawing from accepted positions; 85% of residents prefer a later, unified timeline. https://thepathologist.com/issues/2025/articles/october/fixing-fellowship-fatigue/ ⟳ ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  7. Compensation: the two published pathology figures, and what was removed. Medscape Physician Compensation Report 2026 (2025 earnings) — pathology $394,000; the primary report is paywalled and returns HTTP 402. Doximity 2025 Physician Compensation Report (2024 earnings, ~37,000 US physicians) — pathology $373,384, openable directly at https://www.doximity.com/reports/physician-compensation-report/2025. Both publish means rather than medians, neither is inflation-adjusted, and neither breaks out a pathology subspecialty. Corrected 2026-08-13: this page previously carried a dermatopathology range of $249,000–$460,000, a stated spread of estimates from ~$270,000 to ~$484,000, and a comparative subspecialty ladder (hematopathology $226,000–$417,000, cytopathology $170,000–$317,000, neuropathology $175,000–$288,000, forensic $156,000–$285,000, pediatric pathology ~$313,354). All of it came from a Physicians Thrive compilation of Salary.com, Glassdoor and Bureau of Labor Statistics data with no stated data year. The whole ladder was removed rather than relabeled as directional, and the reason is the compilation itself: it gave the overall pathologist average as ~$366,000, $28,000 below what Medscape published for 2025 earnings, which is the clearest evidence that it is not reporting what it claims to report. ⟳ Corrected 2026-08-17: the compensation section justified the removal by calling Salary.com, Glassdoor and BLS "excluded sources on this site." Only Glassdoor is. Salary.com was kept on 2026-08-13, labeled as an HR-reported benchmark and usable for percentile structure rather than levels, which is what the note below this one already describes it doing on this page. BLS has never been on the excluded list, and dermatology.md and emergency-medicine.md both cite it as a floor. The removal stands; the stated reason did not. ⟳ On Salary.com: its CompAnalyst benchmark is HR-reported employer survey data blended with job-posting data, not a physician panel. It is base-weighted and so runs low against total-compensation surveys, and it is used here for percentile structure rather than for levels. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  8. The single public account of dermatopathology pay this site could find. Student Doctor Network, "Dermatopathology Job Market looking good !!! ($450k, with 2 years partnership track)," December 2022 — https://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/dermatopathology-job-market-looking-good-450k-with-2-years-partnership-track.1473020/ . One poster, describing that season's hiring cycle: a $450,000 starting offer, and $350,000 as the lowest offer they knew of among pathology-trained dermatopathology fellows. This is a public forum discussion and anecdotal by construction, it is a single voice, and it describes a market from December 2022 rather than today. It is reported here as one person's observation rather than as a range, because one person is not a distribution. This site's standing rule is that a forum is evidence for what people do, prefer or use and never for a number; the compensation sourcing standard says the opposite for pay specifically. That conflict is unresolved and this citation sits inside it. ⟳ A forum may source pay here, because a poster reporting their own salary is first-hand about their own life — never a price, a fee, a legal requirement or a claim about an institution. Read as anecdote, not survey data. ↩

  9. The dermatopathology-specific trainee figure. ACGME, Data Resource Book, Academic Year 2024-2025, https://www.acgme.org/globalassets/pfassets/publicationsbooks/2024-2025_acgme_databook_document.pdf — "Dermatopathology (multidisciplinary)": 58 programs, 71 fellows, 36 female (50.7%), 35 male (49.3%). Added 2026-08-17: the Quick dashboard and Who's in the field both said no stable subspecialty figure existed and inherited from the two parents instead, in the same line that cites this book twice for the parent numbers. The figure was in it. At 50.7% the fellowship sits below pathology residents (54.7%) and well below dermatology residents (65.3%), so "somewhere between the two parents" was also the wrong shape. No publisher gives a figure for practicing dermatopathologists, and that caveat stands. ⟳ ↩

  10. Demographic trend. "Demographic trends for fellows in Mohs surgery and dermatopathology 2010–2024," JAAD (2025) — continued rise in the proportion of women fellows across both subspecialties. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0190962225032396 ⟳ ↩ ↩2

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