Pediatric Dermatology — 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: peds derm, pediatric dermatology. A 1-year ABD-approved fellowship entered after a dermatology residency. Organ system: the skin of children, from the neonatal intensive care unit to adolescence.

Subspecialty fellowship of Dermatology.

The 30-second version

Dermatology is among the hardest residencies in American medicine to match into, and its pediatric subspecialty left 41% of its fellowship positions unfilled. That contradiction is the whole story of this field, and unusually the field has measured its own cause. When trainees were surveyed about what discouraged them from pediatric dermatology, 83% named the lack of a salary benefit for the additional training, 73% named the extra year itself, and 20% named having to relocate. The pay gap is real and its mechanism is specific: pediatric dermatologists average around $100,000 less than colleagues treating adults, because children's skin disease requires far fewer of the biopsies, destructions, and cryotherapy that generate dermatology's income. Meanwhile the clinical work has been transformed within a career. Infantile hemangiomas, once left to disfigure or treated with steroids and surgery, now resolve on a beta blocker. Severe childhood eczema now has biologics. The trade at the center: one of the most satisfying and most needed practices in medicine, in a subspecialty that its own parent field will not staff.

Quick dashboard (details and sources below)


Training after med school	5 years (4 yr dermatology residency including intern year + 1 yr peds derm fellowship)
Total from college start	~13 years (4 undergrad + 4 med school + 4 residency + 1 fellowship)
Training chain	Med school (4) → Dermatology (4) → 1-yr ABD-approved pediatric dermatology fellowship → ABD subspecialty certificate
Competitiveness	Very low as a fellowship. 41% of positions went unfilled in the 2025 appointment year ⟳
Typical full-time pay	$400,599 median (Society survey · SPD 2025, n=171, 2024 earnings), against adult dermatology at $448,000 (Medscape 2026) and $508,401 (Doximity 2025) ⟳
Pay vs. parent (general dermatology)	Below, because children's skin disease generates far fewer procedures ⟳
Lifestyle	Outpatient, appointment-driven, minimal call, one of medicine's most controllable ⟳
Burnout	No subspecialty figure; parent dermatology is 31.5% against a 41.9% all-physician average on the AMA's 2025 survey ⟳
% women	66.7% of fellows (14 of 21, ACGME AY2024-25); parent dermatology 53% practicing, 65.3% of residents ⟳
DO / IMG accessibility	Poor at the residency door: ~7% DO of positions and near-zero IMG ⟳

What they actually do

Vascular anomalies are the field's signature. Infantile hemangiomas, port-wine stains, and the vascular malformations that come with syndromes, managed with propranolol, pulsed dye laser, and multidisciplinary vascular anomaly clinics. This is the part of the practice that changed most dramatically in the last two decades.

Atopic dermatitis is the volume. Childhood eczema is common, miserable, disruptive to sleep and school, and now treatable at the severe end with biologics and targeted small molecules that did not exist a decade ago.

Genodermatoses are the field's diagnostic heart. Epidermolysis bullosa, ichthyoses, neurofibromatosis, tuberous sclerosis, incontinentia pigmenti, and the long tail of single-gene skin disorders. Recognizing them is often a pattern-recognition skill that only this subspecialty reliably has, and the diagnosis frequently reveals systemic disease nobody was looking for.

Neonatal dermatology is a distinct body of knowledge. The skin of a premature infant behaves differently, benign transient rashes have to be told apart from serious ones, and a birthmark in a particular distribution can be the first sign of an underlying malformation.

Acne and adolescent skin disease is a large and undervalued share of the practice, including isotretinoin management and the psychological weight that visible skin disease carries in adolescence.

The rest of the practice: psoriasis in children, vitiligo, alopecia areata, hemangioma-associated syndromes, cutaneous manifestations of systemic disease, laser therapy, pigmented lesions and the rare pediatric melanoma, and the dermatologic complications of childhood cancer treatment.

Representative work: infantile hemangioma diagnosis and propranolol management · port-wine stain and vascular malformation laser therapy · multidisciplinary vascular anomalies clinic · moderate to severe pediatric atopic dermatitis, including biologics · epidermolysis bullosa and other genodermatoses · neonatal and premature infant skin disease · birthmark evaluation and syndrome recognition · pediatric psoriasis, vitiligo, and alopecia areata · acne and isotretinoin management · pigmented lesions in children · cutaneous signs of systemic and genetic disease.¹

A day in the life: outpatient clinic, almost entirely. Visits are longer than adult dermatology because the patient is a child and the conversation is with a parent, and a substantial share of the work is reassurance done well. Procedure time exists but is a much smaller fraction of the day than in adult practice, and lasers and examinations under anesthesia are scheduled separately. Many pediatric dermatologists work at children's hospitals within multidisciplinary clinics.

On call: minimal, and among the lightest in medicine. Inpatient consultation for severe drug reactions, blistering disease, and neonatal skin problems is the exception.

The training path & time to completion

Medical school (4 yrs) → dermatology residency (4 yrs including the intern year) → 1-year ABD-approved pediatric dermatology fellowship → American Board of Dermatology subspecialty certification.²

The fellowship is one year and required regardless of prior pediatric training. A dermatologist who completed a pediatrics residency first still needs the fellowship for the certificate.²
There are 37 accredited pediatric dermatology fellowship programs in the United States, on ACGME's count for academic year 2024-25, and that count has been climbing: 17, then 29, 34 and 37 across the years its book covers. The 38 the workforce literature quotes is an ABD-approved count from November 2021.³⁴ ⟳
The applicant pool is tiny. Across the 2009 to 2023 match cycles, 277 applicants participated in total, a range of 11 to 25 per year and a mean of 19.³ ⟳
It does not run through the NRMP, which is one reason its match data is less visible than most subspecialties'.⁵
Total from the start of college: about 13 years.

The asymmetry is the point. Getting into dermatology is one of the steepest climbs in American medicine, at roughly 7% DO and near-zero IMG representation.⁴ Getting a pediatric dermatology fellowship afterward requires wanting one. Very few of the people who won the first competition enter the second.

How competitive is it?

The numbers here are stark, and they run the opposite way from what a premed would guess about a dermatology fellowship.

41% of pediatric dermatology fellowship positions went unfilled in the 2025 appointment year.⁵ ⟳
A third of programs fail to match anyone in a typical year. Across recent cycles the mean program match rate was 68%, ranging from 46% to 91%, with an average of 32% of programs failing to match a fellow annually, and a mean position fill rate of 57%.³ ⟳
The 2023–2024 class left 12 of 36 positions unfilled, or 33%.³ ⟳
The pattern is pediatric rather than dermatologic. For the 2025 appointment year, 28% of all pediatric fellowship positions went unfilled, while most internal medicine subspecialties filled over 94%. Pediatric ophthalmology, which also sits outside the NRMP, ran 31% unfilled.⁵ ⟳
The upstream residency is the opposite in every respect, among the hardest specialties in medicine to match.⁴ ⟳

The honest read. If you get into dermatology, this fellowship is essentially yours for the asking. The field's difficulty is not getting in, it is that so few people want to.

Board: American Board of Dermatology subspecialty certification in pediatric dermatology, requiring the approved one-year fellowship and a certifying examination.²

Compensation — the robust version

This is an unusually well-diagnosed pay problem, because the field surveyed its own trainees, asked them directly what put them off, and published the answer.

The field measures itself, and the report is free. The Society for Pediatric Dermatology runs a compensation survey of its own members and publishes the whole thing as a free public PDF, which is rare for a subspecialty this small. The 2025 edition covers the twelve months ending 31 December 2024 and carries 171 physicians in its final compensation dataset, a quarter of everyone it invited.⁶

	Normalized total compensation
25th percentile	$340,883
Median	$400,599
70th percentile	$470,000
75th percentile	$487,500
90th percentile	$600,000
Mean	$432,323

Society survey · SPD 2025 · n=171 · 12 months to 31 Dec 2024. Figures are normalized to a 1.0 FTE, so part-time practice is scaled up rather than dragging the median down.⁶ ⟳

The parent anchor, and why the gap looks different depending on which survey you pick. Two national surveys publish dermatology and they disagree by about 13%, which is a methodological difference rather than an error in either: $448,000 (Medscape 2026, 2025 earnings) and $508,401 (Doximity 2025, 2024 earnings), both means.⁴ Against Doximity the gap is about $108,000, which is what the workforce literature has been reporting for years.⁷ Against Medscape it is closer to $47,000. Anyone quoting a single number for this gap is picking a survey without saying so, and now you know which one produces which answer. ⟳

Where you work moves it more than anything else you control. Academic and health-system employment is where 68.9% of respondents are, and it is the lowest-paying ownership category in the report at a median of $400,000; independent medical groups are the highest at $450,000. Academic rank moves it too, from $364,780 for assistant professors to $400,000 for associates and $441,386 for full professors. A new full-time hire's median starting base is $342,500, about 17% below the field's median compensation.⁶ ⟳

The mechanism is procedural volume, and it is not a mystery. Dermatology's income comes substantially from procedures: biopsies, electrodesiccation and curettage, cryotherapy, excisions, and in private practice cosmetic work. Children's skin disease is largely medical rather than procedural. There is no pediatric equivalent of the skin cancer surveillance practice that fills an adult dermatologist's schedule, and there is no pediatric cosmetic market. Fewer procedures, less revenue, and no amount of clinical skill changes the arithmetic.⁷

What the trainees said. Asked what discouraged them from pursuing the fellowship, respondents named a lack of salary benefit from the additional training at 83%, the additional time required at 73%, and geographic relocation at 20%.⁷ A field rarely gets this clear a diagnosis of its own recruitment failure.

The academic concentration compounds it. Most pediatric dermatology jobs are at children's hospitals and academic centers, and academic dermatology already sits at the bottom of the parent field's range at roughly $436,000 before the pediatric discount is applied.⁴ ⟳

One genuine counterweight, and the survey can see it. A pediatric dermatologist remains a board-certified dermatologist and can see adults, and many structure a mixed practice for exactly that reason. The SPD report finds that the higher the proportion of pediatric patients in a practice, the lower the compensation, which is the mitigation showing up in the data rather than in advice. That flexibility is a real financial floor most undersubscribed subspecialties do not have.⁶

What to hold lightly: the SPD figures are a society polling its own members, so they carry the usual self-selection risk, and a 25% response rate means three in four pediatric dermatologists did not answer. Set against the alternative for a subspecialty this size, which is usually no published figure at all, this is a genuinely good source, and it reports the subspecialty directly rather than as a gap from its parent. Benchmark a real offer against the academic rung and your own academic rank, and against what fraction of the practice will be adult. ⟳

Lifestyle

Among the most controllable practices in all of medicine, inheriting dermatology's defining advantage.⁴
Outpatient and appointment-driven, with a schedule that is genuinely a schedule.
Call is minimal, mostly inpatient consultation for severe drug eruptions and neonatal disease.
Visits run longer than adult dermatology, because the conversation is with a parent and reassurance takes time.
Procedure time is limited, which is the lifestyle upside and the compensation downside in one fact.
Geographic flexibility is poor. Jobs concentrate at children's hospitals, and much of the country has no pediatric dermatologist within a long drive.
Waiting lists are long everywhere, which is a shortage symptom that sets the daily pressure.

Lifestyle rating: 4.5/5. Close to the ceiling in medicine for schedule control and call burden, deducted only for a narrow job map.

Wellbeing — the part to take seriously

No pediatric dermatology figure was located. Inherit parent dermatology, which the AMA's 2025 Organizational Biopsy puts at 31.5% burnout against a 41.9% all-physician average, more than ten points below it.⁴ ⟳

The waiting list is the field's characteristic moral weight. With this few practitioners, families wait months, and a child with severe eczema is not sleeping during those months. The scarcity is not abstract when it is your clinic that is full.

Visible disease in children carries a particular psychological load. A facial hemangioma, extensive vitiligo, or severe acne affects how a child is treated by other children, and the physician is managing that alongside the skin.

Epidermolysis bullosa and the severe genodermatoses are the hardest part of the caseload. Some of these children have no effective treatment, the care is supportive and painful, and the relationships last for years.

The counterweight is unusually strong and unusually visible. Propranolol for infantile hemangioma is one of the clearest therapeutic wins in modern medicine, discovered by accident and now standard, and it means the specialty routinely takes a disfiguring lesion off a baby's face. Biologics have done something similar for severe childhood eczema. Practitioners describe both as the reason the pay gap is worth it.

The reassurance half is underrated. A large share of the work is telling a frightened parent that the mark on their newborn is benign, and doing that well is a real clinical skill with a real effect on a family.

Who's in the field (demographics)

ACGME publishes the fellowship's sex breakdown and nothing else. Everything below it is inherited from dermatology, with the caveat that the parent's own demographics are unusual.

Women: 66.7% of fellows, 14 of 21 active fellows in academic year 2024-25, against 3 men and 4 who did not report. Twenty-one people is the whole national cohort and four of them are missing from the numerator and denominator both, so the percentage rests on fourteen. Parent dermatology runs 53% of practicing physicians (AAMC, 2022 data) and 65.3% of residents (ACGME, AY2024-25), which makes it one of the few competitive specialties where women are the majority in both counts.⁴ ⟳
DO: roughly 7% of dermatology positions, among the least open fields in medicine.⁴ ⟳
IMG: near zero.⁴ ⟳
Programs: 37 accredited (ACGME, AY2024-25), against 38 ABD-approved on the 2021 count, with a mean of 19 applicants a year nationally.³⁴ ⟳
Underrepresented in medicine: no subspecialty figure. Dermatology has a long-documented problem here, and it matters clinically in this field specifically, because skin disease presents differently on darker skin and the training materials have historically underrepresented it. A pediatric dermatologist who recognizes atopic dermatitis and vascular lesions across all skin tones is doing something the specialty has been slow to teach. ⟳

Culture, personality & the online stereotypes

Who gravitates here: dermatology residents who liked the children's clinic and were willing to give up money for it. The field is small, academic, collegial, and unusually mission-driven for a dermatology subspecialty, largely because everyone in it made the same financially irrational choice deliberately. 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:

"Extra training to earn less." Documented, quantified, and the field's own explanation for its unfilled positions.⁷
"Rashes and reassurance." Dismissive, and it undersells the genodermatoses and vascular anomalies work that nobody else can do.
"You gave up Mohs for this." The comparison people actually make, since Mohs is the other dermatology fellowship and self-reports near $710,000.⁴
"There are none of you anywhere." Accurate, and the reason waiting lists run months.

What people say online (synthesized and paraphrased, not quotes): across trainee and physician forums, pediatric dermatology reads as the choice people admire and decline. The dominant recurring theme is the pay comparison, discussed openly and usually with reference to Mohs as the alternative fellowship. A second is that people who do it seem to genuinely love it, which comes up repeatedly as a counterargument. A third is the mixed-practice strategy, recommended often as the way to make the numbers work by keeping adult patients. A fourth is the shortage, discussed as both a job-security argument and a workload warning. The tone is respectful and financially blunt.

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

Reporting on the fellowship match records 41% of pediatric dermatology positions unfilled in the 2025 appointment year, against 28% across all pediatric fellowships and over 94% fill in most internal medicine subspecialties.⁵
Workforce analysis reports a mean program match rate of 68%, an average of 32% of programs failing to match a fellow annually, a mean position fill rate of 57%, and 277 applicants across the 2009 to 2023 cycles.³
The Society for Pediatric Dermatology's own 2025 compensation survey (n=171, 2024 earnings) puts the field's median at $400,599, with academic employment, where most of the field sits, lowest at $400,000.⁶
Workforce commentary reports pediatric dermatologists earning roughly $100,000 less than adult colleagues, attributes it to lower procedural volume, and records trainees naming lack of salary benefit (83%), additional training time (73%), and relocation (20%) as the top deterrents.⁷

Why people choose it / why people leave

Why choose it: propranolol for hemangiomas and biologics for severe eczema, two genuine therapeutic revolutions inside one career · genodermatoses and vascular anomalies that almost nobody else can diagnose · among the best lifestyles in medicine · an ABD subspecialty certificate · overwhelming demand and permanent job security · you remain a general dermatologist and can see adults · long relationships with families.

Why leave or avoid it: roughly $100,000 below adult dermatology for an extra year of training · a job map fixed to children's hospitals · waiting lists you cannot clear · severe genodermatoses with no effective treatment · limited procedural work, if procedures are what you enjoy · a small field with thin local community.

Best fit if: you want children as your population and dermatology as your tool · pattern recognition and rare disease appeal · you are content on an academic salary · the lifestyle matters more to you than the ceiling · you like working in multidisciplinary teams.

Not for you if: you want dermatology's income, which is in Mohs and private cosmetic practice · you need geographic freedom · a procedure-heavy day is what you enjoy · you would resent the gap over a thirty-year career.

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

Where it fits FLI realities well:

The fellowship itself is wide open, at 41% unfilled with a third of programs matching nobody.³⁵ If you reach dermatology, this door is not a competition.
PSLF fits well, because the jobs are at children's hospitals and academic centers.
The lifestyle is among the best in medicine, which has real value if you are supporting family or are the first in yours in a professional career.
You keep a general dermatology credential, which is a genuine financial floor. Mixed practice is a normal and respectable way to structure this career, and it is the single most important piece of practical advice in this profile.
The clinical disparity is concrete. Skin disease presents differently on darker skin, dermatology has historically taught it poorly, and children from families without access wait longest for a specialist who is already scarce.

Risks to name honestly:

The barrier is dermatology itself, and it is one of the highest in medicine. Roughly 7% DO and near-zero IMG representation, with research output and connections weighing heavily in the match.⁴ For an FLI student dermatology is one of the least accessible doors in medicine, and the honest planning horizon starts in the first year of medical school. That is the real obstacle, not the fellowship.
You are choosing against a gap of roughly $50,000 to $108,000 a year, every year, for a career, depending on which adult dermatology survey you measure against.⁴⁷⁶ Over thirty years that is a very large number either way, and 83% of your peers looked at it and declined.⁷ Model it rather than absorbing it as a vague trade.
Mohs is the alternative fellowship and it self-reports near $710,000.⁴ Same residency, same one extra year, and on these figures roughly double the outcome. Make that comparison deliberately, and note that the Mohs number is 73 dermatologists reporting their own pay rather than a survey line.
Geography is dictated by children's hospitals, which may be far from family.

Bottom line for FLI: the hard part is dermatology, and if you get there this subspecialty is genuinely available and genuinely needed. A median of $400,599 is a strong income by any measure outside its own field; what it costs is a gap of somewhere between $47,000 and $108,000 a year against your alternatives, in a specialty where the alternatives are unusually lucrative. The mitigation is real and widely used: keep adults in your practice. Decide with the Mohs comparison in front of you rather than after the fellowship.

Fun facts

One of the hardest residencies in medicine to enter feeds a fellowship that left 41% of its positions unfilled.⁵⁴
In a typical recent year, about a third of the country's pediatric dermatology programs matched nobody at all.³
The entire national applicant pool averaged 19 people a year across the 2009 to 2023 cycles.³
The field asked its trainees why, and 83% said the additional training brought no salary benefit.⁷
Infantile hemangioma treatment was transformed by a serendipitous observation that propranolol shrinks them, replacing steroids and surgery as first-line care.
Its sibling fellowship from the same residency, Mohs surgery, self-reports near $710,000, roughly double this one.⁴

Sources

Clinical scope. Composite of published US pediatric dermatology fellowship curricula and program descriptions, which consistently cover vascular anomalies and infantile hemangiomas, atopic dermatitis including systemic and biologic therapy, genodermatoses including epidermolysis bullosa and the ichthyoses, neonatal dermatology, birthmark and syndrome evaluation, pediatric psoriasis, vitiligo and alopecia areata, acne and isotretinoin, laser therapy, and cutaneous manifestations of systemic disease. Society for Pediatric Dermatology fellowship program profiles (https://pedsderm.net/training/fellowships/acgme-approved-pediatric-dermatology-fellowship-programs/pediatric-dermatology-fellowship-program-profiles/), Duke (https://dermatology.duke.edu/pediatric-dermatology-fellowship), and University of Michigan (https://medschool.umich.edu/departments/dermatology/education/fellowships/pediatric-dermatology), accessed 2026. ↩
Certification. American Board of Dermatology subspecialty certification in pediatric dermatology requires participation in an approved one-year pediatric dermatology fellowship regardless of previous pediatric training, followed by a formal certifying examination. Society for Pediatric Dermatology training resources, https://pedsderm.net/training/fellowships/ (accessed 2026). ⟳ ↩ ↩² ↩³
Match statistics and program counts. Workforce and match analyses of pediatric dermatology fellowship report 38 ABD-approved fellowship training programs in the United States; 277 applicants participating in the match across 2009 to 2023, a range of 11 to 25 per year with a mean of 19; a mean program match rate of 68% (range 46%–91%); an average of 32% of programs failing to match a fellow annually (range 9%–55%); a mean position fill rate of 57% (range 33%–75%); and 12 of 36 positions unfilled in the 2023–2024 class. "Update on the Pediatric Dermatology Workforce Shortage," Cutis (https://www.mdedge.com/cutis/article/248300/pediatrics/update-pediatric-dermatology-workforce-shortage) and "One Third of Pediatric Dermatology Fellowships Fail to Match," Medscape (https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/one-third-pediatric-dermatology-fellowships-fail-match-2026a1000lid), accessed 2026. ⟳ Corrected 2026-08-17: two places stated the 38 as a current count. Its source is Teresa S. Wright, MD, "Update on the Pediatric Dermatology Workforce Shortage," Cutis 2021 November;108(5):237–238, published November 4, 2021, with its program and match counts labeled "unpublished data, September 2021" — the figure is five years old. ACGME's Data Resource Book counts 37 accredited pediatric dermatology programs for AY2024-25 and shows the count moving every year (17 → 29 → 34 → 37), so both places now lead with the accredited count and date the 38. The two labels are genuinely both in use in this field, which is why the older figure is dated rather than deleted: the SPD's own page is titled "ACGME Approved Pediatric Dermatology Fellowship Programs," while ABD is the certifying board. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹
Parent-field figures for dermatology. Compensation, from the surveys directly rather than through a cross-reference: Medscape Physician Compensation Report 2026 (2025 earnings) gives dermatology $448,000; Doximity 2025 Physician Compensation Report (2024 earnings, ~37,000 US physicians) gives $508,401, https://www.doximity.com/reports/physician-compensation-report/2025 . Both report means rather than medians, neither is inflation-adjusted, and the ~13% disagreement between them is methodological rather than an error in either, so this page quotes both and averages neither. The Medscape report is paywalled and returns HTTP 402, so its table is read through relays. The setting ladder is a different kind of number and is labeled as one: academic ~$436k, non-academic hospital ~$466k, PE-backed group ~$524k, non-PE group ~$541k, solo private ~$658k, partner/owner ~$667k, and Mohs ~$710k come from Physician Side Gigs' 2024 dermatologist survey, in which 73 dermatologists reported their own compensation, https://www.physiciansidegigs.com/average-dermatologist-salary . That is self-reported rather than surveyed pay, on a small sample, and it skews toward high earners and practice owners; the ordering is worth more than any single rung. Correction 2026-08-13: this page previously gave the parent field as a "~$450,000–$510,000" band with no year and no publisher named, presented the setting ladder as though it carried the same authority, and twice described Mohs as "roughly triple" pediatric dermatology. On these figures it is closer to double. The competitiveness and schedule figures are carried from the dermatology profile on this site, which is a cross-reference rather than a source. Burnout, and which instrument it comes from. Corrected 2026-08-17. The dashboard and the Wellbeing section both said parent dermatology is "consistently among the lowest of all specialties on Medscape 2024," and this footnote said in as many words that the characterization overstated the case, at 46% against a 49% average and outside the ten lowest rows that report prints. The correction reached the footnote and never reached the reader. It is worse than that on re-checking: the two relays named here print twenty rows between them, ten highest and ten lowest, and dermatology is in neither, so the 46% has no support at either address and is removed rather than relabeled. Medscape Physician Burnout & Depression Report 2024 (n=9,226, fielded July–October 2023, all-physician average 49%) is paywalled and returns HTTP 402, and its relays here are Healthgrades Pro (https://resources.healthgrades.com/pro/the-most-and-least-burned-out-physicians-by-specialty) and Advisory Board (https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2024/01/31/physician-burnout), whose twenty rows run from emergency medicine at 63% to plastic surgery at 37%. The page's burnout claim now rests on the AMA row below, which is primary, readable and prints dermatology. Women practicing, 53%: AAMC, "Women are changing the face of medicine in America" (2022 data), https://www.aamc.org/news/women-are-changing-face-medicine-america, against 38.7% of all active physicians on 2024 data (AAMC, 2025 Key Findings, https://www.aamc.org/data-reports/data/2025-key-findings). Women in training, dermatology residents 65.3% in academic year 2024-25: ACGME, Data Resource Book, Academic Year 2024-2025, Table C.21, https://www.acgme.org/globalassets/pfassets/publicationsbooks/2024-2025_acgme_databook_document.pdf. The same table carries the fellowship row: pediatric dermatology, 37 programs, 21 active fellows, 14 women (66.7%), 3 men (14.3%), 4 not reported (19.0%). Corrected 2026-08-17: the dashboard and the demographics section said no subspecialty figure existed, and this footnote hedged the absence as "not established here." The row is in the same table, in the same edition, that this footnote cites in the previous sentence for the parent field's 65.3%. It is reported above with its n, because four of twenty-one fellows not reporting sex is most of the reason to read it carefully. Correction 2026-08-13: this page previously carried the parent field at ~51–53% practicing and ~60% of residents, in the Quick dashboard and in Who's in the field. DO and IMG: 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 gives dermatology (PGY-2) 7.3% DO and 2.4% IMG of 546 positions offered, 99.8% filled. ⟳ A second, freely readable instrument: the AMA's 2025 Organizational Biopsy (~19,000 physicians, 38 states) puts Dermatology at 31.5% against a 41.9% all-physician average, https://www.ama-assn.org/practice-management/physician-health/these-9-physician-specialties-report-highest-burnout-rates. It is primary where Medscape reaches this page through relays, and its baseline sits seven points below Medscape's 49% — the two never belong in the same sentence, and a cross-specialty rank must name which survey it comes from. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷
Fill rates in context. For the 2025 appointment year, 41% of pediatric dermatology and 31% of pediatric ophthalmology positions were unfilled, neither specialty participating in the NRMP; 28% of all pediatric fellowship positions went unfilled, while most internal medicine subspecialties filled over 94% of training positions. "'More Training to Earn Less': Pediatric Subspecialists Band Together to Correct Workforce Issues," Medscape, https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/more-training-earn-less-pediatric-subspecialists-band-2025a1000wdo (accessed 2026). ⟳ ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶
Pediatric dermatology's own compensation figures. Society for Pediatric Dermatology, 2025 Pediatric Dermatology Physician Compensation Report, covering the 12 months ending 31 December 2024, https://pedsderm.net/site/assets/files/1013/spd_2025_pediatric_dermatology_compensation_report.pdf . 691 members invited, 174 responses (25%), 171 physicians in the final compensation dataset; all figures normalized to a 1.0 FTE. Normalized total compensation, All Pediatric Dermatologists row: mean $432,323, 10th $300,000, 20th $333,647, 25th $340,883, 30th $353,333, 40th $372,770, 50th $400,599, 60th $438,023, 70th $470,000, 75th $487,500, 80th $510,000, 90th $600,000. Corrected 2026-08-17: this page printed $470,000 as the 75th percentile, in the compensation table, in this footnote and in the figure caption. It is the 70th; the 75th is $487,500. The appendix table carries eleven percentile columns rather than the usual four, and the row was read one column short. The other three percentiles the page prints were exact. By ownership, academic hospital/health system/university/faculty practice plan is the largest group (68.9% of respondents) and the lowest paid, median $400,000, against independent medical groups at $450,000. By academic rank: assistant professor $364,780, associate professor $400,000, professor $441,386. New full-time hires: median starting base $342,500, about 17% below the field median. Median compensation per wRVU $60.90 on a median 6,988 normalized wRVUs. The report also finds that the higher the share of pediatric patients in a practice, the lower the compensation. Two things to know about this source. It is published and copyrighted by the specialty society, but administered by ECG Management Consultants, a healthcare consultancy, so the instrument is a consultancy's and the data and the publication are the society's. And it is a society polling its own members: a 25% response rate means most of the field did not answer, and self-selection can move a median in either direction. It remains the only source anywhere that reports this subspecialty directly rather than as a gap from dermatology. Note: the report's narrative gives the academic cohort as n=133 and its appendix table gives n=123. Added 2026-08-13. This page previously said no survey isolated pediatric dermatology and reasoned the figure down from the parent field; the survey existed and was free the whole time. ⟳ ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶
The pay gap and its causes. This is a gap reported in the dermatology workforce literature, not a compensation survey, and no survey publishes a pediatric dermatology figure at all. Workforce commentary reports that a pediatric dermatologist earns roughly $100,000 less than colleagues who treat adults, attributed to performing fewer procedures because the pediatric disease mix requires fewer biopsies, destructions, and cryotherapy; trainees surveyed on what discouraged them from pursuing a pediatric dermatology fellowship named a lack of salary benefit with additional training (83%), the additional time required (73%), and geographic relocation (20%). "Pediatric Dermatology Workforce Shortage Explained," Cutis/MDedge (https://www.mdedge.com/dermatology/article/178558/pediatrics/pediatric-dermatology-workforce-shortage-explained) and "What influences a trainee's decision to choose pediatric dermatology as a career?" (https://www.mdedge.com/dermatology/article/256264/pediatrics/what-influences-trainees-decision-choose-pediatric-dermatology), accessed 2026. ⟳ ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸

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