Endourology — 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: endourology and laparoscopy, minimally invasive urology, robotic urology, stone disease. A 1–2 year fellowship entered after a urology residency, not a residency you match into from medical school. Organ systems: the whole urinary tract, approached through its own openings rather than through an incision.

Subspecialty fellowship of Urology.

The 30-second version

Endourology is the subspecialty defined by an approach rather than an organ: everything in the urinary tract that can be reached with a scope, a wire, or a robot instead of an open incision. In practice that means two things. The first is stone disease, which is the highest-volume surgical problem in urology and is treated with ureteroscopy, percutaneous nephrolithotomy, and shock wave lithotripsy. The second is the minimally invasive and robotic reconstruction and oncology that reshaped urology over the past twenty-five years, plus the growing menu of surgical treatments for benign prostatic hyperplasia, from holmium laser enucleation to the newer water-jet and implant-based options. What makes the field unusual among the urology fellowships is its economics. Andrology and pediatric urology both lead into academic jobs at the bottom of urology's pay distribution; endourology leads into high-volume, outpatient, ambulatory-surgery-center-compatible practice, which is the part of the specialty where the money actually is. The trade at the center of the field: the most commercially marketable skill set in urology, in a fellowship with no board certificate and no accreditation, treating a disease the AUA's own guideline puts at a 20% to 67% recurrence rate within five to ten years.¹

Quick dashboard (details and sources below)


Training after med school	6–7 years (5 yr urology residency + 1–2 yr endourology fellowship)
Total from college start	~14 years (4 undergrad + 4 med school + 5 residency + 1 fellowship)
Training chain	Med school (4) → Urology (5 yr, early AUA match) → 1–2 yr endourology fellowship (Endourological Society, AUA-run match)
Competitiveness (as a urology fellowship)	No published match rate. The Endourological Society sponsors a formal AUA-run match with results in mid-June ⟳
Typical full-time pay	No endourology line in any survey. Parent urology runs $535,000 (Medscape 2026) / $559,474 (Doximity 2025), and the practice profile fits the higher-paying settings — inferred from urology, no direct data ⟳
Pay vs. parent (general urology)	The one urology fellowship whose case mix points at or above the parent, because it is compatible with private practice and ASC ownership ⟳
Lifestyle	High-volume outpatient surgery, largely scheduled, with obstructed infected stones as the genuine emergency ⟳
Burnout	No subspecialty figure; parent urology is ~49.5%, roughly second-highest of all specialties on the AMA's 2025 survey ⟳
% women	No published subspecialty figure; parent urology ~11% practicing and ~42% of 2025 matched applicants ⟳
DO / IMG accessibility	Gated behind urology (~7–8% DO, ~3–4% IMG of matches) ⟳

What they actually do

Stone disease is the volume. Kidney and ureteral stones affect as many as one in nine US adults over a lifetime,¹ and the surgical management of them is the endourologist's core work. Flexible and semirigid ureteroscopy with laser lithotripsy has become the dominant operation, percutaneous nephrolithotomy handles the large and complex stone burden, and shock wave lithotripsy remains in use for selected cases. Alongside the surgery sits metabolic evaluation and prevention, since a stone former is a patient with a recurring condition rather than a one-time surgical problem.

Minimally invasive and robotic surgery is the technique. Endourology fellowships have historically been the route through which laparoscopic and then robotic urology entered practice, and most programs are titled some variation of endourology, laparoscopy, and robotics. That means robotic partial nephrectomy, pyeloplasty, and reconstruction, and at many programs a substantial robotic oncology exposure that overlaps with what a urologic oncology fellowship teaches. The parallel profile is urologic oncology, and the overlap between the two is a live discussion inside urology.

Benign prostatic hyperplasia surgery has become a significant third pillar, and it is where the field's technology turns over fastest. Holmium laser enucleation of the prostate, thulium enucleation, water-jet ablation, prostatic urethral lift, and steam-based therapies all sit in this space, and adoption varies enormously by surgeon and market.

Upper tract endoscopy for urothelial carcinoma completes the picture: diagnostic ureteroscopy, biopsy, and endoscopic ablation of low-grade upper tract tumors in patients whose kidney is worth preserving.

Representative procedures: flexible and semirigid ureteroscopy with holmium or thulium laser lithotripsy · percutaneous nephrolithotomy, including access · shock wave lithotripsy · ureteral stent placement and management · robotic and laparoscopic partial nephrectomy, pyeloplasty, and ureteral reconstruction · holmium laser enucleation of the prostate and the other BPH surgical options · endoscopic management of upper tract urothelial carcinoma · metabolic stone evaluation and prevention.²³

A day in the life: high-volume operative days and a clinic that is genuinely surgical. A ureteroscopy list can run six to ten cases, most of them short, many in an ambulatory surgery center rather than a main hospital operating room. Clinic mixes new stone consultations, post-operative stent removals done in the office, metabolic follow-up, and BPH evaluations. The rhythm is closer to a busy procedural specialty than to a reconstructive one, and the operative learning curve is about efficiency and instrument mastery as much as about anatomy.

On call: real and specific. An obstructing stone with infection is a urologic emergency, because the obstructed, infected kidney can produce sepsis quickly, and the treatment is urgent decompression with a stent or a nephrostomy tube. Those arrive at night. Most other stone work is urgent-but-schedulable.

The training path & time to completion

Medical school (4 yrs) → urology residency (5 yrs, entered through the separate early AUA match) → 1–2 year endourology fellowship → practice.²³

The residency is the hard gate, running its own early match roughly six weeks ahead of the NRMP, with about 1.3 to 1.5 applicants per position and roughly one in four unmatched.⁴ The parent urology profile covers it.
The fellowship is 1 to 2 years, one being common for a clinically focused year and two where research or a heavier robotic oncology component is included.
Accreditation is by the Endourological Society rather than ACGME, and endourology carries no American Board of Urology subspecialty certificate. ABU issues two: pediatric urology, from 2008, and urogynecology and reconstructive pelvic surgery, from 2013.⁵
The match is formal and AUA-run, which distinguishes endourology from andrology, where fewer than half of programs participate in the match at all. For the 2027 cycle, registration opened December 1, 2025, applications closed March 16, 2026, rank lists ran April 13 to May 22, and results were released June 15, 2026. Applicants may not enter more than one AUA specialty match simultaneously.³
Total from the start of college: about 14 years.

What the fellowship is actually buying, and it is worth being precise. Every urology residency teaches ureteroscopy and basic stone surgery; a general urologist does stones every week. The fellowship buys percutaneous access, complex and staghorn stone management, advanced robotic reconstruction, HoLEP and the enucleation techniques, and the volume to be genuinely fast at all of it. It is a skills fellowship rather than a scope-of-practice fellowship, and its value shows up in what you can offer a large group practice rather than in a credential.

How competitive is it?

No match rate is published. The AUA administers the match on behalf of the Endourological Society and does not release public applicant-to-position statistics.³

What can be said with sources:

The filter is the urology residency, which is one of the harder and earlier matches in medicine.⁴
Endourology is among the more popular urology fellowships, because the skill set is broadly employable and the case mix is compatible with private practice, which most urology subspecialties are not.
The match is at least organized, which distinguishes it from andrology's optional process and makes the field's selection more legible.³

The honest read. Attainable for a resident who wants it, with real competition at the high-volume programs known for percutaneous access and enucleation training. As across urology, the competitive event that shaped your career was the residency match.

Board: none. Primary certification is the American Board of Urology, whose two subspecialty certificates are in pediatric urology and in urogynecology and reconstructive pelvic surgery. Neither is this field.⁵

Compensation — the robust version

No survey reports an endourology line. Physician Side Gigs, surveying 52 full-time urologists from mid-2023 to mid-2024, states explicitly that its dataset was too small to break out subspecialties, and no other published source does better.⁶

The parent anchor is well measured. Urology ran $535,000 in Medscape's 2026 report (2025 earnings, up about 6% year over year) and $559,474 in Doximity's 2025 report (2024 earnings). Those are the two national surveys that carry the field, and they are what an endourologist's pay should be read against.⁷ ⟳ Offer data agrees: across AMN Healthcare's 2023/24 recruiting engagements, urology starting salaries averaged $496,000 against a $300,000 low and a $630,000 high, which is a first-contract figure and sits below mid-career pay by design.⁸ ⟳

The setting ladder is where this page earns its keep, and it comes from a smaller and softer source. The Physician Side Gigs survey of 52 full-time urologists puts the field's average at $564,000 and its median at $530,000, close enough to both national surveys to be usable, with a range from $220,000 to $1.2 million.⁶ It is a self-reported survey of fifty-two people rather than a national instrument, so take its splits as shape rather than as measurement.

Cut	Figure
Owner or partner	$717,000
Group private practice	$622,000
Non-academic hospital	$621,000
W-2 employee	$500,000
Academic hospital	$455,000

⁶ ⟳

Here is where endourology differs from its sibling fellowships, and it is the most useful thing on this page. Owners and partners earn about 43% more than employed urologists, and group private practice pays about 36% more than academic. Read those two gaps from the other end and they are the same numbers: academic runs about 27% below group private practice, and employed urologists about 30% below owners. The pediatric urology profile describes this same ladder from that other end, so the two pages quote different percentages for one set of dollar figures. Both are the same finding. Andrology and pediatric urology both lead almost exclusively into the academic column. Endourology does not. Stone surgery is high-volume, outpatient, and performed in ambulatory surgery centers, which are precisely the settings where private urology groups generate income and where physician ownership is possible. Lithotripsy partnerships and ASC ownership have been part of urology's business model for decades.

So the structural inference runs the other way here. An endourologist is well positioned for the higher-paying half of the urology distribution, not because the fellowship pays a premium but because it trains you for the work that the well-paying settings do most of. The same is true of BPH surgery, which is high-volume, technology-driven, and increasingly done outside the hospital.

Two honest counterweights. Academic endourology exists and pays like academia, at roughly $455,000, and it is where the complex percutaneous and robotic reconstruction work concentrates.⁶ And the ownership income above is not a subspecialty effect at all, so a fellowship-trained endourologist who takes a W-2 hospital job earns the W-2 figure.

Limited-data caveat, and it is the whole compensation section in one line: no survey at any tier publishes an endourology figure. Medscape and Doximity stop at urology, MGMA's subspecialty tables are paywalled, no urologic society posts member compensation publicly, and no forum discussion this site could find reports endourologist pay as distinct from urologist pay. What you have above is the parent field, measured, plus a setting ladder from a 52-person survey, plus an inference from case mix about which rung this fellowship lands on. That inference is reasoning rather than a measurement, and it is the honest ceiling on what anyone can tell you about what an endourologist earns. ⟳

Lifestyle

Parent urology has moderate surgical hours, roughly 45 to 56 a week with strong schedule control.⁴ Endourology fits inside that.
The operative day is high-volume and short-case, which is a distinct rhythm: many cases, quick turnovers, a lot of ambulatory-center work, less standing in one place for eight hours than in open or reconstructive surgery.
Call has a specific and unavoidable feature. An obstructing infected stone can become septic quickly and needs urgent decompression, so the field generates genuine night work. It is short work, since a stent or nephrostomy is a brief procedure, but it is real and it recurs.
Geographic flexibility is the best of the urology subspecialties. Stones are everywhere, BPH is everywhere, and both are treated in community hospitals and surgery centers as well as academic ones. Where pediatric urology needs a children's hospital and andrology needs an IVF program, endourology needs neither.
Ambulatory practice compresses the week. A practice that runs its lists in an ASC has more control over scheduling than one dependent on hospital operating-room block time.

Lifestyle rating: 3/5. Controllable, scheduled, outpatient-weighted surgery, deducted for genuine emergency call and for the volume-driven pace of a high-throughput practice.

Wellbeing — the part to take seriously

No endourology-specific wellbeing data exists.

The parent figure is the striking one. Urology carries roughly 49.5% burnout, close to the highest of any specialty on the AMA's 2025 survey, which the parent profile calls the field's paradox given moderate hours and good schedule control.⁴ Administrative burden and patient volume are the usual explanations rather than raw hours. A high-throughput stone practice is squarely a high-volume practice, so this is one urology subspecialty where the volume driver is amplified rather than reduced. Treat the parent number as a live risk here rather than a ceiling. ⟳

The distinctive clinical frustration is recurrence. Stone disease comes back. The AUA's medical-management guideline reports recurrence of 20% to 67% within five to ten years of a first stone, which is a wide band because the studies behind it differ in how they define and detect a recurrence.¹ Metabolic prevention depends on patient adherence to fluid and dietary changes that most people do not sustain. The field therefore contains a lot of repeat business with the same patients, which some practitioners find satisfying as longitudinal care and others find dispiriting as an unwinnable problem.

The compensating satisfaction is immediacy. Renal colic is among the most severe pain in medicine, and relieving an obstruction produces immediate, dramatic, and audible relief. Few surgical fields offer such a direct line from operation to patient gratitude, and practitioners name it consistently.

The technology treadmill is a real feature of the job. BPH surgery in particular turns over rapidly, with new devices and techniques arriving faster than the outcome data supporting them. Staying current is continuous work, and the field carries an ongoing tension between genuine innovation and industry-driven adoption.

Career longevity is good. Endoscopic and robotic ergonomics are seated and console-based rather than physically punishing, though the fluoroscopy exposure of percutaneous work and lead-apron wear are real occupational considerations that the field takes seriously.

Who's in the field (demographics)

No published endourology-specific demographic data exists. Inherit urology, directionally.

Women: no subspecialty figure. Parent urology runs about 11% women practicing against roughly 42% of the 2025 matched applicant cohort, so the pipeline is changing fast from a very low base.⁴ ⟳
DO: roughly 7–8% of urology matches.⁴ No documented additional fellowship filter. ⟳
IMG: roughly 3–4% of urology matches, among the least open in medicine.⁴ ⟳
Underrepresented in medicine: no subspecialty figure; urology has historically been among the less diverse surgical specialties and the gap is inherited. ⟳
The parent-field pay gap belongs on this page more than on most, because this is the subspecialty where private-practice and ownership income is available and those are the arrangements where gaps tend to widen. In the urologist survey, women averaged $484,000 against $601,000 for men, unadjusted for setting, seniority, or hours.⁶ ⟳

Culture, personality & the online stereotypes

Who gravitates here: urology residents who liked operating fast and liked technology. The field rewards efficiency, instrument fluency, and comfort with a high case count, and it attracts people who enjoy the engineering side of surgery, since scopes, lasers, and robots are the subject matter as much as the anatomy is. It is also the urology fellowship most compatible with a private-practice career, which self-selects for people who want that. 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:

"Stone jockeys." The volume jab, aimed at a practice built on repeating the same short operation. The kernel is real, since ureteroscopy volume is high. The unfair edge is that percutaneous access, staghorn management, and complex robotic reconstruction are technically demanding work that general urology does not do.
"The fellowship you do for the job market." Said with more approval than scorn inside urology, and largely accurate: the endourology skill set is what a large group practice wants to hire, and residents know it.
"Endourology and urologic oncology are converging." A live structural discussion rather than a stereotype, since both fellowships now train robotic surgery heavily and the boundary between an endourologist doing robotic partials and a urologic oncologist doing them is institutional rather than technical.
"BPH is where the industry money is." A pointed observation about a subfield in which device manufacturers are unusually active and outcome data sometimes lags marketing. The field discusses this openly.

What people say online (synthesized and paraphrased, not quotes): across trainee and physician forums, endourology reads as the pragmatic fellowship. The recurring theme is employability: posters describe it as the fellowship that makes you attractive to private groups, that travels well geographically, and that does not commit you to academia the way andrology or pediatric urology does. A second thread is whether the fellowship is necessary at all, given that every urologist does stones, with the consensus being that it matters for percutaneous access, HoLEP, and complex robotics rather than for routine ureteroscopy. A third concerns call, with repeated warnings that a stone-heavy practice generates real night work because obstructed infected stones cannot wait. A fourth is the ASC and ownership question, discussed as the actual lever on urology income. The tone is practical and business-aware in a way most subspecialty discussions are not.

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

The Endourological Society sponsors the fellowship and the AUA administers its match on the same platform as the pediatric urology, andrology, and urologic oncology matches, with a December registration opening and mid-June results.³
Physician Side Gigs' urologist survey reports the setting ladder that governs urology income, from academic at $455,000 to owner-partner at $717,000, and states plainly that its sample was too small to break out subspecialties.⁶
Within urology's board structure, ABU certifies two subspecialties and endourology is not one of them, so endourology practice rests on fellowship training and demonstrated volume rather than on a certificate.⁵

Why people choose it / why people leave

Why choose it: the most employable skill set in urology, and the one private groups actively recruit for · genuine geographic freedom, since stones and BPH exist everywhere · compatibility with private practice, ASC work, and ownership, which is where urology's income actually lives · technically satisfying endoscopic and robotic surgery with a fast learning curve and visible mastery · immediate, dramatic symptom relief in renal colic · a formal, organized fellowship match, unlike some of its sibling subspecialties.

Why leave or avoid it: no board certificate and no ACGME accreditation · genuine emergency call from obstructed infected stones · a recurring disease with poor long-term adherence, which some find dispiriting · high-volume, repetitive operative days · a technology treadmill in BPH surgery with industry pressure attached · fluoroscopy exposure and lead-apron wear over a career · overlap with urologic oncology that can blur what the fellowship is for.

Best fit if: you liked endoscopy and robotics more than open surgery · you want private-practice options and geographic freedom · you are comfortable with high case volume and fast turnover · you find the engineering side of surgery interesting · you want to be hired quickly and widely after fellowship.

Not for you if: you want a board certificate at the end · repetitive high-volume operating would bore you · genuine night call is something you were trying to avoid · you would rather do a small number of complex cases than a large number of short ones · radiation exposure is a dealbreaker.

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

Where it fits FLI realities well:

This is the urology subspecialty with the best financial case, and that is the strongest financial case in the field. Where andrology and pediatric urology commit you to academic practice at roughly $455,000, endourology trains you for the work that private groups and ambulatory surgery centers do, and those settings run $622,000 and above, with owner-partners at $717,000.⁶ For a student whose family's financial position changes with their income, that difference is not abstract.
Geographic freedom is real and it matters. Stone disease and BPH are everywhere, so this fellowship does not require you to live where a children's hospital or an IVF program is. If staying near family is a constraint, this is the urology subspecialty that accommodates it.
Employability is high. The skill set is what group practices recruit for, which is a meaningful advantage for anyone without a professional network to lean on.
The fellowship is one year in the common configuration, so the opportunity cost is the smallest among urology's subspecialties.

Risks to name honestly:

The barrier is the urology match, and it is severe, early, and expensive. Roughly 1.3 to 1.5 applicants per position, about one in four unmatched, ~7–8% DO and ~3–4% IMG, with results weeks ahead of the NRMP.⁴ Away rotations and research are the currency and both cost money. Reaching this field means clearing that first.
PSLF fits this path worse than its siblings, and the reason is the same fact that makes it pay more. Private groups and ambulatory surgery centers are not qualifying employers. If loan forgiveness is central to your debt plan, the high-paying version of this career works against it, and the strategy becomes pay-it-down-fast rather than forgive. That is a legitimate trade, and it should be a deliberate one.
Ownership requires capital and time. The $717,000 figure belongs to partners, and partnership usually means a buy-in and several years as an employee first. If you have no family money, plan for the employed figure of around $500,000 in your early years and treat partnership as a later step rather than a starting condition.
The night call is real, and if you are also carrying family responsibilities, an unpredictable septic-stone page is worth factoring in honestly.

Bottom line for FLI: of urology's subspecialties, this is the one that pays best, travels best, and hires fastest, and it costs the least training time to reach. The hard part remains the residency match, which is stacked against applicants without research funding and a home department. If you clear that, endourology is the version of this specialty that gives you the most freedom about where to live and the most control over what you earn. The catch worth planning around is PSLF, which fits this path poorly precisely because the good jobs are in private practice.

Fun facts

The subspecialty is defined by a route, not an organ. Endourology means reaching the urinary tract through its own openings, which is why the field spans stones, prostate, and upper tract tumors without any anatomical unity.
As many as one in nine US adults will form a kidney stone, which is why stone surgery is the highest-volume operative problem in urology and why the fellowship travels so well.¹
An obstructed infected stone is one of the few true emergencies in elective urology. The kidney above the obstruction can seed sepsis quickly, and the fix is a short decompression procedure done urgently.
Endourology fellowships taught urology the robot. These programs were the route through which laparoscopic and then robotic technique entered general urologic practice, which is why most are titled endourology, laparoscopy, and robotics.
There is no board in it, as in most of urology. ABU holds two subspecialty certificates, in pediatric urology and in urogynecology and reconstructive pelvic surgery, and the rest of the field's subspecialties run on fellowship training alone.⁵
The match runs on the AUA's platform alongside pediatric urology, andrology, and urologic oncology, and you may only enter one of them at a time.³

Sources

Stone epidemiology, which this page previously asserted twice without a source. American Urological Association, Medical Management of Kidney Stones: AUA Guideline (2026), Purpose section: kidney stone disease affects "as many as one in nine United States adults at some point in their lives," with "reported recurrence rates after a first-time stone diagnosis of 20-67% at 5-10 years in adults and 50% at 3 years in children." https://www.auanet.org/guidelines-and-quality/guidelines/medical-management-of-kidney-stones . The AUA's Surgical Management of Stones guideline states the prevalence half independently as "approximately 1 in 9 individuals in the United States." Corrected 2026-08-17: the 30-second section's closing sentence said stone disease "recurs in about half of patients within a decade," a point estimate with no citation on a page whose only other sources are AUA fellowship and match pages, and the wellbeing section's version of the same fact declined to quantify it at all. The guideline's own figure is a range, 20% to 67%, wide because the studies behind it define and detect recurrence differently; the 50% that circulates as the adult figure is the guideline's three-year pediatric number. Prevalence was carried as "roughly one in ten Americans" in two places and is the AUA's one in nine US adults. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
Clinical scope and fellowship content: stone disease (ureteroscopy with laser lithotripsy, percutaneous nephrolithotomy, shock wave lithotripsy, metabolic evaluation), minimally invasive and robotic urology, BPH surgical management, and endoscopic management of upper tract urothelial carcinoma. Endourological Society fellowship materials and AUA fellowship society directory, which lists the Endourology Society as the administering body for the subspecialty. https://www.auanet.org/membership/membership-committees/residents-and-fellows-committee/fellowships (accessed 2026). ↩ ↩²
Match administration and timeline. American Urological Association — Specialty Match Timelines: the Endourology Fellowship Match is sponsored by the Endourological Society and run on the AUA's medmatch platform; for the 2027 cycle registration opened December 1, 2025, applications closed March 16, 2026, rank lists ran April 13 to May 22, 2026, and results were released June 15, 2026. The AUA runs parallel matches for pediatric urology (Society for Pediatric Urology), andrology (SSMR), and urologic oncology (SUO), and applicants may not participate in more than one simultaneously. https://www.auanet.org/meetings-and-education/for-residents/urology-and-specialty-matches/specialty-match-timelines (accessed 2026). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷
Parent-field figures for urology: typical comp ~$535k–$560k; burnout ~49.5%, roughly second-highest of all specialties, against moderate hours of ~45–56/week and strong schedule control; 11% women practicing and ~42% of 2025 matched applicants; ~7–8% DO and ~3–4% IMG of matches; separate early AUA residency match; ~1.3–1.5 applicants per position with about one in four unmatched. Burnout: AMA, 2025 Organizational Biopsy (~19,000 physician responses across 38 states, collected in 2025 by 106 health systems), which prints "Urological surgery: 49.5%" as the second-highest of the nine specialties it names, behind emergency medicine at 49.8%, against an all-physician baseline of "41.9% of physicians reported experiencing at least one symptom of burnout": https://www.ama-assn.org/practice-management/physician-health/these-9-physician-specialties-report-highest-burnout-rates . The figure and the rank both come from that one instrument, which is what this site requires of a cross-specialty rank. Corrected 2026-08-17: the body and the dashboard carried 49.5% and "roughly second-highest," which the AMA source confirms exactly, while this footnote documented a different instrument — Medscape 2024 at 49% against a 49% all-physician average — and then used it to tell the reader that the body's own rank claim was unsupported. It named Healthgrades Pro and Advisory Board as the relays carrying that row; Healthgrades publishes twenty specialty rows and urology is in neither of its two lists, and the Advisory Board article carries no specialty table. No AMA link appeared anywhere in this file. The Medscape paragraph and its "sits at the average rather than second-highest" argument are gone, and the citation now matches the number the page was already printing. 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 — urology 11%. Women in training: 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 urology residents at 36.1% across all years; the ~42% above is a single matched cohort rather than the resident body, and the two are not interchangeable. Corrected 2026-08-17: the dashboard and the demographics bullet both rounded AAMC's 11% up to "~12%," which is a page disagreeing with its own citation on a number it prints twice, and rounding away from the source rather than toward it. Both now say ~11%. Swept 2026-08-17: 11% practicing, of the active urology workforce on AAMC's 2022-data specialty table, is the value all five urology profiles now state. The carried-figures list at the head of this footnote had been left at "~12% women practicing" by that earlier correction, so the same footnote said 12% in one clause and 11% in another. AAMC's table row reads "Urology | 4% (2004) | 11% (2022)." The AUA's own 2024 Census puts the workforce at about 12%, a later vintage on a different instrument and within a point of AAMC; it is named on the urology profile rather than mixed in here. Urology residency runs through the AUA's own early match rather than the NRMP, so the NRMP Results and Data tables that supply DO and IMG shares for every other specialty on this site do not cover it; the ~7–8% DO and ~3–4% IMG figures come from AUA match reporting and this footnote has no direct link to that release. See the urology profile on this site for the parent picture. ⟳ ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸
Board status. The American Board of Urology issues two subspecialty certificates. ABMS lists them under Urology as "Pediatric Urology" and "Urogynecology and Reconstructive Pelvic Surgery": ABMS, Guide to Medical Specialties (2024 edition), https://www.abms.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/abms-guide-to-medical-specialties-2024-08-06.pdf , and ABMS's own Urology board page, https://www.abms.org/board/american-board-of-urology/ . ABU dates them itself: pediatric urology subspecialty certification began in 2008, https://abu.org/pediatric-urology/ , and urogynecology and reconstructive pelvic surgery in 2013, https://abu.org/urogynecology-and-reconstructive-pelvic-surgery/ . Endourology carries no ABU subspecialty certificate and its fellowships are society-endorsed rather than ACGME-accredited; compiled from AUA and society fellowship materials, and see the pediatric urology profile on this site for the contrast (accessed 2026). Corrected 2026-08-17: this page said in five places, four of them reader-visible, that pediatric urology is the only urology subspecialty with its own certifying examination. It is not; URPS has been certified since 2013. The true half of the claim, that endourology itself has no certificate, is what the page actually needed and is unchanged. One wrong premise repeated until the page corroborated itself is the shape this correction is guarding against, so all five places now say the same, checkable thing. ⟳ ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
The setting ladder. Physician Side Gigs — average urologist salary survey, mid-2023 to mid-2024, n = 52 full-time urologists: average $564,000, median $530,000, range $220,000–$1,200,000; group private practice $622,000, non-academic hospital $621,000, academic hospital $455,000; W-2 employees $500,000 against owners and partners $717,000; female urologists $484,000 against male $601,000. The survey states explicitly that its dataset was not large enough to assess salary differences by subspecialization. A self-reported survey of fifty-two physicians rather than a national instrument; its field average and median sit close to both national surveys in ⁷, which is the reason to trust its shape. https://www.physiciansidegigs.com/average-urologist-salary ⟳ Corrected 2026-08-13: this footnote previously described academic hospital pay as "36% below private practice." $455,000 against $622,000 is 27% below; the 36% is the gap read the other way, private practice above academic. Both directions are now stated in the body, because the pediatric urology profile describes the same ladder from the other end and the two pages otherwise appear to disagree. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷
The two national surveys that carry urology, neither of which breaks out a subspecialty. Medscape Physician Compensation Report 2026 (2025 earnings) — urology ~$535,000, up about 6% year over year; the primary is paywalled and returns HTTP 402, so it reaches this site through https://www.medscape.com/p11/medscape-urologist-compensation-report-2026-evaluating-your-2026a1000ed9 and the summary at https://www.nuaxia.com/post/medscape-urologist-compensation-report-2026 . Doximity 2025 Physician Compensation Report (2024 earnings, ~37,000 US physicians) — urology $559,474, openable directly at https://www.doximity.com/reports/physician-compensation-report/2025 . Both publish means rather than medians, neither is inflation-adjusted, and neither publishes an endourology line. ⟳ ↩ ↩²
Offer data for the parent field: actual contract offers, so starting salary rather than mid-career pay, across about 20 broad specialties with no subspecialty rows. AMN Healthcare / Merritt Hawkins, 2024 Review of Physician and Advanced Practitioner Recruiting Incentives, covering search engagements from April 1, 2023 to March 31, 2024 — urology average starting salary $496,000, low $300,000, high $630,000. https://www.amnhealthcare.com/siteassets/amn-insights/physician/incentive-review-2024-final.pdf ⟳ ↩

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