Pediatric Orthopedics — 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 ortho, pediatric orthopedic surgery, POSNA fellowship. A 1-year fellowship entered after an orthopedic surgery residency, not a residency you match into from medical school. Organ system: the growing skeleton, which behaves differently from the finished one.

Subspecialty fellowship of Orthopedic Surgery.

The 30-second version

Pediatric orthopedics exists because a growing skeleton is a different organ from an adult one, and the difference cuts both ways. Children's bones heal fast and remodel, so fractures that would need a plate in an adult can be treated in a cast and will straighten themselves. But children also have growth plates, and a growth plate is both a vulnerability and a tool: injure it and a limb grows crooked or stops growing, control it deliberately and you can correct a deformity by guiding growth rather than cutting bone. The territory runs from the very common, meaning children's fractures, which are the volume, through the conditions the specialty is known for: developmental dysplasia of the hip, clubfoot treated by the Ponseti casting method rather than by surgery, slipped capital femoral epiphysis, Perthes disease, and the neuromuscular hip and spine problems of cerebral palsy. Scoliosis surgery sits at the top as the field's largest operation and its economic engine. The trade at the center of the field: work with an eighty-year horizon and the highest fellowship match rate in orthopedics, in a subspecialty that pays below its parent and lives at children's hospitals.

Quick dashboard (details and sources below)


Training after med school	6 years (5 yr orthopedic surgery residency + 1 yr pediatric orthopedics fellowship)
Total from college start	~14 years (4 undergrad + 4 med school + 5 residency + 1 fellowship)
Training chain	Med school (4) → Orthopedic Surgery (5 yr) → 1 yr pediatric orthopedics fellowship (SF Match)
Competitiveness (as an orthopedic fellowship)	Among the highest match rates of the orthopedic subspecialties studied: 96% for men, the top of the six, and 93% for women, just behind sports medicine ⟳
Typical full-time pay	No pediatric orthopedics survey line. Parent orthopedics runs ~$610,000–$700,000 across surveys; this sits below it ⟳
Pay vs. parent (general orthopedics)	Below, on the pattern pediatric subspecialties follow across medicine ⟳
Lifestyle	Elective and outpatient-weighted, with children's-hospital call and a heavy fracture load ⟳
Burnout	No subspecialty row on either survey. This page reads the orthopedics proxy at ~44% (Medscape 2024, among its lowest, against a 49% average) over general pediatrics at 51%, because the week is a surgeon's week ⟳
% women	No practicing figure; parent orthopedics ~6% practicing, the lowest of any specialty, and ~24% of residents ⟳
DO / IMG accessibility	Gated behind orthopedics (of the 963 positions filled in the 2026 Match, 12.6% went to DO seniors, 14.0% counting DO graduates, and 1.0% to IMGs, about ten matches), and DO applicants are ranked lower at the fellowship stage ⟳

What they actually do

Children's fractures are the volume, and they are managed differently from adult fractures for a reason. Remodeling potential means many angulated fractures can be reduced and casted rather than fixed, and the surgeon's judgment is about how much deformity a given child at a given age will correct on their own. Supracondylar humerus fractures are the field's signature acute injury, common, sometimes threatening the brachial artery and median nerve, and frequently needing urgent operative pinning.

Hip conditions define the specialty's diagnostic reputation. Developmental dysplasia of the hip, screened for in infancy and treated with a harness or, later, with reduction and osteotomy. Slipped capital femoral epiphysis in adolescents, which is a surgical urgency because the femoral head can displace further and lose its blood supply. Legg-Calvé-Perthes disease, where the femoral head loses blood supply and reconstitutes over years and the treatment argument is still live.

Clubfoot is the field's best story. Congenital talipes equinovarus was once a major surgical reconstruction with poor long-term results, and the Ponseti method, a sequence of manipulations and casts followed by a small tenotomy and bracing, has largely replaced it. It is a case of a nonoperative technique displacing surgery and producing better outcomes, and it is now standard worldwide.

Spinal deformity is the largest surgery. Adolescent idiopathic scoliosis correction with posterior instrumentation and fusion is a long operation with substantial blood loss and a dramatic radiographic result, and it is the highest-RVU work in the field. Early-onset scoliosis is treated with growing constructs, and neuromuscular scoliosis in cerebral palsy is among the most demanding spinal surgery anyone does.

Neuromuscular and limb deformity completes the picture: hip surveillance and reconstruction in cerebral palsy, tone management, limb length discrepancy treated with guided growth or lengthening, and the skeletal dysplasias.

Representative procedures: closed reduction and percutaneous pinning of supracondylar fractures · flexible intramedullary nailing of pediatric long bone fractures · Ponseti casting and Achilles tenotomy for clubfoot · open reduction and pelvic or femoral osteotomy for hip dysplasia · in situ pinning for slipped capital femoral epiphysis · posterior spinal instrumentation and fusion for scoliosis · growing constructs for early-onset scoliosis · guided growth with tension-band plating · limb lengthening · hip reconstruction in cerebral palsy.¹

A day in the life: clinic-heavy with an outpatient operative list. Clinic runs high volume and is dominated by fracture follow-up, hip and spine surveillance, and reassurance, since a large share of pediatric orthopedic referrals are normal variants of growth that need explaining rather than treating. Operative days mix short cases such as pinning and hardware removal with occasional long scoliosis corrections. Multidisciplinary clinics for cerebral palsy, skeletal dysplasia, and spina bifida are a standing part of the week at children's hospitals.

On call: real. Supracondylar fractures with vascular compromise, septic arthritis in a child, and slipped capital femoral epiphysis are all urgent, and children's hospitals need coverage. The burden is lighter than adult trauma but it is not nominal.

The training path & time to completion

Medical school (4 yrs) → orthopedic surgery residency (5 yrs, integrated) → 1-year pediatric orthopedics fellowship → practice.¹²

The residency is the hard gate, among the most competitive in medicine: of the 963 positions filled in the 2026 Match, 12.6% went to DO seniors and 1.0% to IMGs, about ten matches.³ The parent orthopedic surgery profile covers it.
The fellowship is one year and matches through the separate SF Match. Some trainees add a second year in spinal deformity, which is increasingly common for those wanting a scoliosis-heavy practice.²
There is no board. ABOS certifies subspecialties in only two areas, Orthopaedic Sports Medicine and Surgery of the Hand.³
Total from the start of college: about 14 years.

How competitive is it?

Pediatric orthopedics has the highest fellowship match rates of the orthopedic subspecialties studied.

A 2025 JBJS Open Access analysis of 7,128 US-based applicants across 2012 to 2023 reported pediatrics at 96% for men, the top of the six subspecialties examined, and 93% for women, behind sports medicine at 94% and level with shoulder and elbow. Trauma sat at the bottom of both, 85% for men and 86% for women.⁴ ⟳

The overall orthopedic fellowship picture was equal match rates by gender, at about 90% each, and a persistent gap by degree type: a mean of 91% for allopathic graduates against 82% for osteopathic, with the authors concluding that osteopathic graduates are consistently ranked lower by orthopedic fellowship programs.⁴ ⟳

Why it is attainable is a question of demand. Pediatric orthopedics competes for residents against subspecialties that pay more and have easier call, and it loses that competition often enough that positions are available for those who want them. The same pattern appears across pediatric subspecialties.

The honest read. If you are a US-trained orthopedic resident who wants this, you will very likely get it. The competitive event was the orthopedic match. The real decision is whether you want a career at a children's hospital at pediatric compensation.

Board: none specific. General ABOS certification in orthopedic surgery.³

Compensation — the robust version

No compensation survey isolates pediatric orthopedics. This reasons from the parent field and the pediatric pattern that recurs throughout this site.

The parent anchor. Orthopedic surgery runs roughly $610,000–$700,000 total compensation across the major surveys. The percentile ladder the orthopedic profiles on this site carry sits at the top of that spread — 25th percentile around $520,000, median around $703,000, 75th around $890,000, and 90th above $1.1 million — but it comes from an aggregator's directional planning model rather than from a licensed survey, and it is pending a replacement.³ ⟳

Pediatric orthopedics sits below that, and three mechanisms produce it, none of them about the value of the work:

The payer mix. Children are disproportionately covered by Medicaid, which reimburses below commercial rates, and pediatric orthopedic practices carry a large public-insurance share.
The employment model. The jobs are at children's hospitals, which are nonprofit institutions that do not offer practice ownership or ambulatory surgery center equity. Since ASC ownership is the single largest lever on orthopedic income, closing it closes the ceiling.
The case mix. A great deal of the practice is clinic-based reassurance, casting, and surveillance that generates little surgical revenue, and the fracture work, while high-volume, is lower-RVU than arthroplasty.

Scoliosis is the exception that proves the rule. Spinal deformity correction is long, high-RVU, and implant-heavy, and a scoliosis-weighted practice earns substantially more than a general pediatric orthopedic one. This is why the optional second year in pediatric spine is increasingly popular and why it is worth thinking about early.

Keep the comparison honest. Below the orthopedic median still means near the top of medicine as a whole. The sibling profiles show the same pattern from other angles: pediatric urology and pediatric otolaryngology both sit below their adult parents for structurally identical reasons.⁵

Limited-data caveat: no compensation survey publishes a pediatric orthopedics line, so the positioning is a structural inference from payer mix, employment model, and case mix. The parent median is survey-based; the parent percentile ladder is not, and is pending. Benchmark against children's-hospital orthopedic salary scales and ask specifically about the spine component. ⟳

Lifestyle

Outpatient-weighted and largely elective, with a high-volume clinic and a mixed operative list.
Call is real but lighter than adult trauma. Supracondylar fractures, septic joints, and SCFE need urgent attention, and children's hospitals need coverage, but the volume and the night burden are lower than a Level I adult trauma service.
Scoliosis days are long. A posterior instrumented fusion is a major operation with substantial blood loss and a full-day commitment.
Hospital employment shapes the week, with defined clinical expectations, teaching, and multidisciplinary clinic obligations, along with predictability and benefits.
Geographic flexibility is limited. The jobs are at children's hospitals, so the map is narrower than most orthopedic subspecialties. General orthopedic practices do employ pediatric-trained surgeons in some markets, which widens it somewhat.
Residency remains brutal regardless, as the parent profile documents.³

Lifestyle rating: 3/5. Elective and outpatient-weighted with genuine but manageable call, deducted mainly for the children's-hospital constraint on where you can live.

Wellbeing — the part to take seriously

No pediatric-orthopedics-specific wellbeing data exists, so the figure has to come from a parent, and this field has two of them. Medscape's 2024 report puts orthopedics at roughly 44%, inside its ten least-burned-out specialties and below its own 49% all-physician average, and puts general pediatrics at 51% on that same scale. This page reads the orthopedic row, because what fills a pediatric orthopedic surgeon's week is a surgeon's week: an OR block, a clinic of referrals and post-ops, and trauma call, with the case volume and the compensation structure of orthopedics rather than of general pediatrics. The pediatric half changes who is on the table and who signs the consent rather than how the week is built. Both figures come from Medscape because nothing better publishes them: AMA's 2025 Organizational Biopsy, free and primary and the survey this site ranks from wherever it reaches, prints fifteen specialty rows and skips orthopaedic surgery and pediatrics alike.³ ⟳

The satisfaction case is duration, and it is the strongest argument for the field. Correcting a clubfoot in infancy, reducing a dysplastic hip, or straightening a spine in a fourteen-year-old produces a result that person carries for seventy years. Children also heal remarkably well, so the outcomes are generally good, which is a different professional experience from adult degenerative surgery where you are managing decline.

The distinctive weight is the growth plate. Operating near a physis carries the risk of arresting or tethering growth, producing a deformity that develops over years rather than appearing immediately. A technical error in this field can express itself long after the patient left your care, which is a specific kind of vigilance.

The parents carry the encounter. Consent, compliance, and the emotional weight all run through adults, and pediatric orthopedic clinic involves a great deal of reassurance, since many referrals are normal developmental variants that a worried family needs explained rather than treated.

Non-accidental injury is part of the job. Fractures in young children raise the question of abuse, and pediatric orthopedic surgeons are frequently the ones who must recognize a suspicious pattern and initiate a process with real consequences for a family. It is uncomfortable, unavoidable, and consequential.

Career longevity is good, with outpatient work, manageable call, and a practice that can shift toward clinic and away from long spine cases over time.

Who's in the field (demographics)

Women matched pediatric orthopedics at 93% across 2012 to 2023 against 96% for men. The men's figure is the highest of the six subspecialties studied; the women's sits a point behind sports medicine.⁴ Parent orthopedics runs about 6% women practicing, the lowest of any specialty, and roughly 24% of residents, though pediatric subspecialties across medicine typically run above their parents.³ ⟳
DO: parent orthopedics gave 12.6% of its 963 filled positions to DO seniors in 2026, 14.0% counting DO graduates. At the fellowship stage, osteopathic applicants matched at a mean of 82% against 91% for allopathic applicants across the same period, with programs ranking them lower.³⁴ ⟳
IMG: about ten matches a year into orthopedic residency, or 1.0% of the positions offered, so the pipeline is nearly closed upstream.³ ⟳
Underrepresented in medicine: no figure, at either level. No race-by-specialty table for practicing physicians is currently published, so the widely repeated claim that orthopedics sits at the bottom of the field on this measure cannot be checked here and is not asserted. What is documented is the mismatch of setting: children's hospitals serve a Medicaid-heavy and substantially more diverse population than the workforce treating them. ⟳

Culture, personality & the online stereotypes

Who gravitates here: orthopedic residents who liked children and liked deformity. The field draws people interested in development and growth as biological processes rather than only in mechanics, and it rewards patience, since a pediatric clinic cannot be rushed and a parent conversation cannot be skipped. It is academic and hospital-based by construction. 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:

"Casts and reassurance." The volume jab. Casting and reassurance are genuinely a large share of clinic, and they coexist with scoliosis correction and hip reconstruction, which are among the biggest operations in orthopedics.
"You take a pay cut to work harder in clinic." Broadly accurate, and the field answers with the time horizon rather than disputing it.
"Scoliosis is where the money is." True enough that the second-year spine fellowship has become a recognized career strategy.
"Children heal, so you cannot really get it wrong." Comprehensively wrong, and the growth plate is why. A physeal injury or tether produces deformity that develops over years.

What people say online (synthesized and paraphrased, not quotes): across trainee and physician forums, pediatric orthopedics reads as well liked and financially avoided. The dominant recurring theme is compensation, described as the trade you accept for the patient population, with the spine fellowship named repeatedly as the way to close the gap. A second thread is geography, with posters warning that children's hospital jobs are concentrated and that the market is narrower than general orthopedics. A third is the clinic volume, described honestly as high and heavily weighted toward normal variants. A fourth, warmer, concerns the work itself, with the Ponseti method and hip dysplasia treatment held up as examples of interventions that change a life at almost no surgical cost. The tone is affectionate.

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

A 2025 JBJS Open Access analysis of 7,128 US-based orthopedic fellowship applicants across 2012 to 2023 found pediatrics with the highest subspecialty match rate for men, 96%, and 93% for women against sports medicine's 94%, alongside an overall finding of equal match rates by gender and a persistent degree-type gap of 91% allopathic against 82% osteopathic.⁴
ABOS certifies only two orthopedic subspecialties, sports medicine and surgery of the hand, so pediatric orthopedic surgeons practice under general certification.³

Why people choose it / why people leave

Why choose it: interventions with a seventy-year horizon, in patients who heal well · the Ponseti method and hip dysplasia treatment, where small early interventions prevent lifelong disability · scoliosis correction as one of orthopedics' largest and most visually dramatic operations · growth as a tool, with guided growth correcting deformity without cutting bone · the highest fellowship match rate in orthopedics · multidisciplinary practice in cerebral palsy and skeletal dysplasia clinics.

Why leave or avoid it: compensation below the orthopedic median, with the ownership route closed by children's-hospital employment · a job map limited to children's hospitals · high clinic volume weighted toward reassurance · genuine call for supracondylar fractures, septic joints, and SCFE · non-accidental injury casework · the delayed expression of growth-plate errors.

Best fit if: the developmental stakes genuinely appeal to you · you have patience with children and parents · deformity correction interests you more than degenerative surgery · you can be flexible about geography · you are considering the spine year to widen the practice.

Not for you if: you want orthopedics' income ceiling, which requires ownership · you need geographic freedom · high-volume reassurance clinic would frustrate you · you want to avoid call entirely.

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

Where it fits FLI realities well:

PSLF fits this path unusually well for orthopedics. Children's hospitals are nonprofit qualifying employers and the field's entire job market sits inside them, with five residency years and a fellowship year counting toward the 120 payments. In a specialty where the high-earning route is private ownership and disqualifies you, this is one of the few subspecialties where employment is the norm and the employer test is easy to meet. Read the forgiveness half more carefully. PSLF discharges the federal balance and nothing else, and since July 2026 the federal system stops lending at $200,000, which is less than medical school costs at almost every school. A reader starting now graduates with a private loan above the federal one, and no program forgives it.
The income remains near the top of medicine even below the orthopedic median.³
No buy-in and no capital requirement, since hospital employment means a defined salary from day one.
The fellowship is the most attainable in orthopedics, at 93% to 96% match rates.⁴
The patients are disproportionately publicly insured, and a surgeon who understands why a family missed a cast change is doing something the field needs.

Risks to name honestly:

The residency is one of the least FLI-accessible gates in medicine: 12.6% of its 963 filled positions to DO seniors, 1.0% to IMGs, and 6.8% women among practicing orthopedic surgeons.³ Research, away rotations, and connections decide it, and all cost money.
The DO disadvantage continues at the fellowship stage, at 82% against 91%, with programs ranking osteopathic applicants lower.⁴
The pay gap against other orthopedic subspecialties is real and compounds. If your family's position depends on your income, model this against sports medicine or arthroplasty, which are reached from the same residency and pay considerably more.
Geography is the binding constraint. If living near family in a specific place is non-negotiable, a children's-hospital-only job market may not permit it.
Consider the spine year deliberately. It is the recognized lever on both the case mix and the income, and it is easier to plan for than to add later.

Bottom line for FLI: the most attainable fellowship in orthopedics, an income near the top of medicine, one of the specialty's few genuine PSLF fits, and work whose benefit runs for a lifetime. The costs are a narrower map and a real gap against what the same residency could have earned elsewhere. If you can get through the orthopedic match, this is a path that asks for no capital and no connections afterward.

Fun facts

Children remodel. Angulated fractures that would need fixation in an adult are frequently casted in a child and straighten themselves, and judging how much will correct is a core skill.
Clubfoot went from major surgery to casting. The Ponseti method of serial manipulation and casting with a small tenotomy displaced extensive surgical release and produces better long-term results.
Growth is a surgical instrument. Guided growth with a tension-band plate corrects angular deformity by tethering one side of a growth plate, no osteotomy required.
It has the highest orthopedic fellowship match rate for men, 96%, and the second-highest for women, 93%, across 2012–2023.⁴
Scoliosis correction is the field's economic engine, which is why a second year in pediatric spinal deformity has become a recognized career strategy.
There is no board in it. ABOS certifies only orthopedic sports medicine and surgery of the hand.

Sources

Clinical scope and fellowship content — pediatric fracture management, developmental dysplasia of the hip, clubfoot and the Ponseti method, slipped capital femoral epiphysis, Perthes disease, spinal deformity, neuromuscular hip and spine reconstruction, limb deformity and guided growth. Composite of published US pediatric orthopedic fellowship curricula and Pediatric Orthopaedic Society of North America materials. (accessed 2026). ↩ ↩²
Match structure. Orthopedic fellowships, including pediatric orthopedics, are matched through the separate SF Match rather than the NRMP. SF Match Orthopaedics Fellowship (https://sfmatch.org/specialty/orthopaedics-fellowship/Overview), accessed 2026. ⟳ ↩ ↩²
Parent-field figures for orthopedic surgery. Compensation, training structure, and competitiveness: typical comp ~$610k–$700k across surveys, with a percentile ladder of 25th ~$520k, median ~$703k, 75th ~$890k, and 90th above $1.1M; 5-year integrated residency with more than 90% of residents doing a fellowship; among the hardest specialties to match. Those are carried from the orthopedic surgery, adult reconstruction and orthopedic sports medicine profiles on this site, which are cross-references rather than sources; the survey figures are cited on those pages. Swept 2026-08-17: this footnote, the dashboard's pay row and the compensation section all labeled the four percentiles "MGMA" — the dashboard called $703,000 "MGMA's median" outright. They come from FastRVU's orthopedic-surgery income guide, which calls itself "a directional planning model centered on $703,000 as an illustrative reference point, not a licensed survey result" and says its percentile table "is not a licensed MGMA table"; the orthopedic surgery profile's own [^10] carries the full record. The false attribution is removed; the figures rest on a host this site's compensation standard excludes and are pending a licensed survey, so they are labeled rather than requoted. ABOS offers subspecialty certification only in Orthopaedic Sports Medicine and Surgery of the Hand; that is the American Board of Orthopaedic Surgery's own subspecialty list. Burnout 44%, among the lowest, against an all-physician average of 49% — Medscape Physician Burnout & Depression Report 2024 (n=9,226, fielded July–October 2023). That report is paywalled and returns HTTP 402, so the orthopedics row reaches this page through one relay that reprints it: Healthgrades Pro (https://resources.healthgrades.com/pro/the-most-and-least-burned-out-physicians-by-specialty), which publishes twenty of the report's twenty-six specialty rows and prints orthopedics at 44% inside its least-burned-out list. Advisory Board's write-up of the same report (https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2024/01/31/physician-burnout) agrees on the edition and the instrument and carries no specialty table, so it does not corroborate the row. The AMA's 2025 Organizational Biopsy, the other instrument this site uses, names fifteen specialties and orthopaedic surgery is not among them. Corrected 2026-08-17. This note claimed three independent relays and named two, one of which publishes no specialty figures at all. Women practicing, 6.8% on 2024 data and still the lowest of any specialty: AAMC, 2025 Key Findings, https://www.aamc.org/data-reports/data/2025-key-findings, where the all-physician share is 38.7%. Women residents, 23.9%: ACGME, Data Resource Book, Academic Year 2024-2025, Table C.21, https://www.acgme.org/globalassets/pfassets/publicationsbooks/2024-2025_acgme_databook_document.pdf. 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 orthopaedic surgery 14.0% DO and 1.0% IMG of the 963 positions offered, all of which filled: 121 DO seniors and 14 DO graduates, 5 US IMGs and 5 non-US IMGs. Corrected 2026-08-17: the body called the IMG figure "single-digit" in four places, and ten is not single-digit; it now reads "about ten matches a year" throughout. The DO range "13–14%" was narrowed to the table's 14.0%. Swept 2026-08-17: 1.0% IMG, about ten matches of 963, and 12.6% DO seniors or 14.0% counting DO graduates, all against the same 963 positions. That earlier narrowing to "roughly 14% DO" was right about the number and left the denominator unnamed, which is the half that matters: 14.0% is DO seniors plus DO graduates (135 of 963) and 12.6% is DO seniors alone (121 of 963), both true of different quantities, and "13–14%" across the rest of the family was never a measurement range but those same two cuts of one Table 2 row. Every figure now travels with what it counts. The five-year DO-senior series is flat rather than rising, 12.6% (2026) · 14.1% (2025) · 12.8% (2024) · 13.2% (2023) · 12.7% (2022), with the most recent move downward, so nothing on this page may call the DO share growing. * The dashboard and the demographics bullet had also attached "the lowest in medicine" to the practicing figure and the resident figure together; only the practicing figure holds the rank. On residents, Table C.21 puts orthopaedic surgery fourth-lowest, behind independent interventional radiology at 14.8%, aerospace medicine at 23.5% and integrated interventional radiology at 23.8%.* ⟳ ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹²
Orthopedic fellowship match by subspecialty, degree, and gender. "Orthopaedic Fellowship Match: How Do Degree and Gender Type Affect Match Rates?", JBJS Open Access, 2025, analyzing SF Match data 2012–2023 — 7,128 US-based applicants; mean match rates 90% ± 6% for women and 90% ± 4% for men; 82% ± 8% for osteopathic against 91% ± 3% for allopathic. Subspecialty rates for women: sports medicine 94%, shoulder and elbow 93%, pediatrics 93%, foot and ankle 92%, adult reconstruction 88%, trauma 86%. For men: pediatrics 96%, foot and ankle 95%, shoulder and elbow 92%, sports medicine 91%, trauma and adult reconstruction 85% each. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12002389/ ⟳ ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸
The pediatric-subspecialty pay pattern. Pediatric urology concentrated in academic children's-hospital employment at the low end of urology's distribution; pediatric otolaryngology at or below general ENT; pediatric anesthesiology ~$480,000 against general anesthesiology ~$535,000–$550,000. The mechanism in each case is payer mix and hospital employment rather than the patients. See the pediatric urology, pediatric otolaryngology and pediatric anesthesiology profiles on this site. Those are cross-references rather than sources, and the compensation survey behind each figure is cited on the page the figure comes from. ⟳ ↩

Researched with AI assistance and reviewed by hand. How this site is made