Spinal Cord Injury Medicine — 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: SCI medicine, SCIM, spinal cord medicine. A 12-month ACGME-accredited fellowship entered after a PM&R residency. Organ system: the spinal cord, and every organ it stopped controlling.

Subspecialty fellowship of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation.

The 30-second version

Spinal cord injury medicine is the specialty of everything a spinal cord does that people never think about until it stops. Paralysis is the visible consequence and it is the least of the medical problem. A spinal cord injury takes out bladder and bowel control, sexual function, temperature regulation, and, above the mid-thoracic level, the autonomic system's ability to manage blood pressure, which produces autonomic dysreflexia, a hypertensive emergency that can be triggered by a full bladder and can kill someone who does not know what it is. It also produces a lifetime of secondary conditions: pressure injuries, neuropathic pain, spasticity, osteoporosis, recurrent urinary infection, and respiratory compromise in high cervical injury. The SCI physician is the person who manages all of that, for decades, as a primary care physician for a body that works differently. The trade at the center of the field: genuinely comprehensive lifelong medicine with an ABPMR board, in a subspecialty held by 4.2% of physiatrists and concentrated in a small number of specialist centers.

Quick dashboard (details and sources below)
Training after med school 5 years (4 yr PM&R residency + 1 yr SCI medicine fellowship)
Total from college start ~13 years (4 undergrad + 4 med school + 4 residency + 1 fellowship)
Training chain Med school (4) → PM&R (4) → 12-month ACGME SCI medicine fellowship → ABPMR SCI medicine certificate
Competitiveness Low. 22 of 33 fellowship positions filled in 2026 (66.7%), with 9 of 22 programs left short ⟳
Typical full-time pay No SCI survey line. Parent PM&R runs ~$360,000–$390,000, with inpatient rehabilitation at ~$260,000–$370,000 ⟳
Pay vs. parent (general PM&R) At or below, on the inpatient side of PM&R's compensation fork ⟳
Lifestyle Inpatient rehabilitation and lifelong outpatient follow-up, daytime, limited call ⟳
Burnout No subspecialty figure; parent PM&R is in the low-to-mid 40s%, lower-to-middle tier ⟳
% women 14 of 25 SCI medicine fellows, 56.0% (ACGME, AY2024-25); parent PM&R 36.8% of residents ⟳
DO / IMG accessibility Excellent, and measured at fellowship level. 36.4% of the 22 positions filled in the 2026 fellowship match went to US DO graduates, the highest DO share of any subspecialty in it ⟳

What they actually do

Acute rehabilitation after injury is the first phase. A patient arrives from neurosurgery or trauma with a new injury and the SCI physician leads the team through mobility training, transfer skills, wheelchair prescription, bladder and bowel program establishment, and the education that will determine how well the person lives afterward.

Bladder and bowel management is the daily substance of the field, and it is the part outsiders least anticipate. Neurogenic bladder is managed with intermittent catheterization, medication, and sometimes surgery, and the stakes are renal preservation: before modern management, kidney failure was a leading cause of death after spinal cord injury. Neurogenic bowel programs are similarly central to both health and dignity.

Autonomic dysreflexia is the field's emergency, and teaching people to recognize it is one of the specialty's most consequential jobs. In injuries above roughly T6, a noxious stimulus below the injury level, often something as simple as a blocked catheter, triggers unopposed sympathetic outflow and a blood pressure spike that can cause stroke or death. Emergency departments frequently do not recognize it, and patients are taught to explain it themselves.

Respiratory management dominates high cervical injury: ventilator weaning, diaphragmatic pacing at some centers, secretion management, and the recognition that respiratory complications remain a leading cause of death in this population.

The secondary conditions are lifelong: pressure injuries, which are largely preventable and enormously costly when they occur; neuropathic pain, which is common and difficult; spasticity, managed with medication, botulinum toxin, and intrathecal baclofen; heterotopic ossification; osteoporosis and fragility fracture below the injury level.

Sexual health and fertility is a core part of practice that is frequently neglected elsewhere, and for a population that is disproportionately young and male at injury, it matters a great deal.

Representative work: acute inpatient rehabilitation after spinal cord injury · neurogenic bladder management, including urodynamics and catheterization programs · neurogenic bowel programs · recognition and management of autonomic dysreflexia · respiratory management and ventilator weaning in tetraplegia · pressure injury prevention and treatment · spasticity management with botulinum toxin and intrathecal baclofen · neuropathic pain management · sexual health and fertility counseling · wheelchair and assistive technology prescription · lifelong surveillance and primary care coordination.1

A day in the life: an inpatient unit and a long-running clinic. The inpatient side is acute rehabilitation with daily team rounds and a heavy education component, since a person and their family are learning to manage a body that now works differently. The outpatient side is the field's distinctive feature: patients return annually for decades, and the SCI physician functions as a specialist primary care physician, screening for the secondary conditions and coordinating urology, plastic surgery, and pulmonary care.

On call: limited. Rehabilitation units generate medical problems rather than emergencies, and the acute injury is managed elsewhere.

The training path & time to completion

Medical school (4 yrs) → PM&R residency (PGY-1 intern year + 3 years) → 12-month ACGME-accredited spinal cord injury medicine fellowship → ABPMR subspecialty certification.12

  • The fellowship is 12 months and ACGME-accredited, and completing it is what makes a candidate eligible for the SCIM examination.2
  • The practice pathway has closed, as it has across PM&R's subspecialties, and its closure measurably reduced the number of new certificates. Across ABPMR subspecialties the average number of new certificates added annually was higher before practice-track eligibility ended than after, with the difference statistically significant for spinal cord injury medicine specifically.3 ⟳
  • Total from the start of college: about 13 years.

A note on where the jobs are. Spinal cord injury care concentrates at designated SCI centers, including the Veterans Health Administration's SCI system of care, which is the largest single employer of SCI physicians in the country and a genuinely distinctive practice environment. Model Systems centers, funded to conduct SCI research and deliver specialist care, are the other concentration. That gives the field a narrow but well-defined job map.

How competitive is it?

This is a small and undersubscribed subspecialty.

  • The fellowship match is the number that answers this question, and it is dramatic. In the 2026 appointment year, 22 programs offered 33 positions and filled 22 of them, a 66.7% fill rate, leaving 9 of the 22 programs with an unfilled seat. On the applicant side, 23 people ranked the specialty, 22 matched, 14 of them (60.9%) to their first choice, and 1 (4.3%) went unmatched.4 ⟳
  • The fill rate swings hard on a small n. Across the five cycles NRMP publishes it reads 54.8% (2022), 64.5% (2023), 56.3% (2024), 38.2% (2025) and 66.7% (2026). On 33 positions a handful of applicants moves the percentage ten points, so read the level rather than the trend: the level is that a third of seats go empty every year.4 ⟳
  • Spinal cord injury medicine is held by 4.2% of ABPMR diplomates, behind pain medicine at 15.5%, sports medicine at 6.6%, and brain injury medicine at 4.8%. That is a measure of how small the certified workforce is rather than of how hard the fellowship is to enter.3 ⟳
  • Only 31.2% of ABPMR diplomates hold any subspecialty certificate, so subspecialization is a minority path in PM&R.3 ⟳
  • New certificates fell measurably when the practice pathway closed, and SCIM was one of the subspecialties where that drop was statistically significant.3 The pipeline is not replacing the workforce quickly.
  • The upstream residency is moderately competitive and among the most DO-accessible fields in medicine.5

The honest read. Anyone who wants this can have it. The constraint is interest, and the compensation and the concentration of jobs are the usual explanations.

Board: ABPMR subspecialty certification in spinal cord injury medicine, requiring 12 months of ACGME-accredited fellowship.2

Compensation — the robust version

No compensation survey isolates spinal cord injury medicine. This reasons from the parent field.

The parent anchor and its fork. PM&R runs roughly $360,000–$390,000 total compensation nationally, split between inpatient rehabilitation at roughly $260,000–$370,000 and interventional pain and spine at roughly $400,000–$700,000 and above.5 ⟳

SCI medicine sits firmly on the inpatient side, and the mechanism is straightforward. The practice is rehabilitation unit leadership, long-term outpatient follow-up, and comprehensive medical management, none of which generates procedural volume. Spasticity management with botulinum toxin and intrathecal baclofen is the main procedural component and it does not approach the volume of an interventional pain practice.

Two features partly offset it. The Veterans Health Administration is a major employer in this field, and federal employment brings a defined salary, strong benefits, a pension, and loan repayment programs that are genuinely valuable and rarely factored into a headline salary comparison. And medical directorship of an SCI program carries a stipend.

The comparison that matters is against pain medicine, reached from the same residency, held by three times as many physiatrists, and paying substantially more.35 Choosing SCI medicine is choosing against that, and the field is candid about it.

Limited-data caveat: no MGMA, Doximity, or Medscape line for spinal cord injury medicine was located, and the positioning is a structural inference from the parent field's documented fork. Benchmark against inpatient rehabilitation scales and, if considering the VA, against total federal compensation including benefits rather than base salary alone. ⟳

Lifestyle

  • Among the most controllable practices in medicine, inheriting PM&R's defining advantage of mostly daytime work with limited call.5
  • The inpatient rhythm is scheduled, built around team rounds, therapy timetables, and family education.
  • The outpatient practice is longitudinal and low-acuity, with patients returning annually for surveillance.
  • Call is limited, since acute injuries are managed by neurosurgery and trauma before they reach rehabilitation.
  • VA employment shapes the week for many in this field, with the predictability and the bureaucracy that federal practice brings.
  • Geographic flexibility is limited. SCI care concentrates at designated centers and VA facilities, so the map is narrower than general PM&R.

Lifestyle rating: 4/5. Daytime, predictable, and low-call, deducted for a narrow job map rather than for any schedule burden.

Wellbeing — the part to take seriously

No SCI-medicine-specific wellbeing data exists. Inherit PM&R at the low-to-mid 40s%, lower-to-middle tier.5 ⟳

The distinctive feature of this field is the length of the relationship, and it cuts both ways. An SCI physician may follow the same patient from a twenty-year-old's injury into their sixties. That produces a depth of relationship almost unmatched in medicine, and it also means being present for the accumulation of secondary conditions over decades, and for the deaths.

The population is young at injury and that shapes everything. Spinal cord injury disproportionately affects young men, frequently through trauma, and the physician meets a person whose entire expected life has changed in an instant. The early rehabilitation period involves grief that is not medical and cannot be treated, and the physician is present for it.

The compensating satisfaction is independence restored. Teaching a person with a C6 injury to transfer, self-catheterize, and live independently is a concrete, teachable, life-defining outcome, and the field's practitioners describe it as the most rewarding work available in rehabilitation.

The advocacy dimension is unusually strong. Accessibility, insurance coverage for equipment, attendant care funding, and employment discrimination are all part of the practice, and SCI physicians are often the person writing the letter that determines whether a patient gets a wheelchair that fits. That is frustrating and it is also meaningful.

The preventable-harm problem is a recurring frustration. Pressure injuries, urinary complications, and unrecognized autonomic dysreflexia are all largely preventable, and they happen anyway when patients cannot access care or when clinicians outside the specialty do not know what they are looking at.

Who's in the field (demographics)

More is published about this fellowship than about most. ACGME counts its active fellows by sex and by medical school type, and NRMP publishes its match by applicant type. Both cohorts are tiny, so the figures below carry their n rather than standing alone, and PM&R is inherited only where neither table has a row.

  • Certification prevalence: 4.2% of ABPMR diplomates.3 ⟳
  • Women: 14 of the 25 SCI medicine fellows nationally, 56.0% in AY2024-25, against 36.8% of PM&R residents, so the subspecialty draws women at well above the rate of the residency feeding it. Hold the n in view: one fellow moves that percentage four points, and the previous year's cohort of 26 would divide differently.5 ⟳
  • DO: the fellowship has its own figures and the two published tables disagree, because they count different cohorts. NRMP's 2026 fellowship match filled 22 positions and 8 of them went to US osteopathic graduates, 36.4%, which NRMP names first among the five subspecialties with the highest DO share in the match. ACGME's count of who is actually in training is 3 osteopathic graduates among 25 active fellows, 12.0%. Neither figure should be quoted alone, because they measure different things: one is a single year's intake as a share of positions filled, the other is the whole standing body as a headcount, and at n=22 and n=25 a couple of people move either by several points. The match figure sits right at the parent field's level of roughly 38% DO of matched PM&R positions; the in-training headcount sits well below it.5 ⟳
  • IMG: the inherited figure does not survive contact with the fellowship's own. Parent PM&R runs roughly 6–8% IMG of matched positions, while ACGME counts 6 international graduates among the 25 active SCI fellows, 24.0%, and NRMP's 2026 match filled 3 of 22 positions with non-US international graduates, 13.6%. On US-citizen IMGs specifically the fellowship is at zero, and NRMP names spinal cord injury medicine among the four subspecialties with the lowest US IMG share in the match, all at 0.0%. The parent figure is the wrong anchor on this axis in both directions.5 ⟳
  • Underrepresented in medicine: no subspecialty figure. Spinal cord injury incidence is higher among Black Americans, violence is a more common mechanism in some populations, and access to specialist SCI care and to durable medical equipment tracks insurance status closely. ⟳

Culture, personality & the online stereotypes

Who gravitates here: PM&R residents who wanted comprehensive medicine and long relationships. The field draws people who like managing many organ systems at once, who are comfortable being a patient's primary physician rather than a consultant, and who are drawn to disability advocacy. It has a strong VA presence and a distinct culture around patient education and independence. 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:

  • "It is all bladder and bowel." Said dismissively and substantially accurate, and the field's answer is that bladder management is why patients no longer die of renal failure.
  • "The VA specialty." The Veterans Health Administration is genuinely the largest employer in this field, which shapes the culture and the job market.
  • "You took the low-paying fork." Accurate against interventional pain, and acknowledged.
  • "Nobody outside the field knows what autonomic dysreflexia is." A real and dangerous problem rather than a joke, and one the specialty spends considerable energy on.

What people say online (synthesized and paraphrased, not quotes): across trainee and physician forums, SCI medicine reads as deeply respected and rarely chosen. The dominant recurring theme is the pain medicine comparison, discussed openly as the financial fork. A second thread is the VA, described as the field's main employer with genuinely competitive total compensation once benefits, pension, and loan repayment are counted, and as an environment people either love or find bureaucratically exhausting. A third is the comprehensiveness of the work, described positively by people in the field, who note that they practice more general medicine than most subspecialists. A fourth is the advocacy load, described as real and as a reason people stay. The tone is warm and quietly frustrated about how invisible the specialty is.

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

  • ABPMR requires 12 months of ACGME-accredited fellowship in spinal cord injury medicine for examination eligibility.2
  • ABPMR's certification data through 2019 records spinal cord injury medicine at 4.2% of diplomates, and notes that the average number of new certificates added annually fell significantly for SCIM after temporary practice-track eligibility ended.3

Why people choose it / why people leave

Why choose it: comprehensive medicine across many organ systems, closer to primary care than most subspecialties get · relationships lasting decades with the same patients · teaching independence, which is a concrete and life-defining outcome · a genuine ABPMR subspecialty board · one of the most DO-accessible routes in medicine · a controllable, daytime, low-call practice · the VA as a stable employer with strong total compensation · a real advocacy role.

Why leave or avoid it: the inpatient side of PM&R's pay fork, well below interventional pain from the same residency · a narrow job map concentrated at designated SCI centers and VA facilities · preventable complications that happen anyway because of access failures · grief work in the early rehabilitation period that no treatment addresses · a subspecialty held by 4.2% of physiatrists, so professional community is thin locally.

Best fit if: you want to be a patient's primary physician rather than a consultant · you like managing several organ systems at once · long relationships appeal to you · you are drawn to disability advocacy · VA practice interests you or is at least acceptable.

Not for you if: you want PM&R's income ceiling, which is in interventional pain · you need geographic freedom · bladder and bowel management would not sustain your interest · you want acute, procedural medicine.

The FLI angle — Spinal cord injury medicine for first-gen, low-income & immigrant students

Where it fits FLI realities well:

  • PM&R is among the most accessible specialties in medicine, at roughly 38–39% DO and 6–8% IMG of matched positions, and this fellowship is undersubscribed.5 For a student facing closed doors elsewhere, this is one of the genuinely open routes to a boarded subspecialty.
  • The VA changes the financial picture more than the headline salary suggests. Federal employment brings a defined salary, a pension, strong benefits, and education debt reduction programs, and it is PSLF-qualifying. For a physician carrying large debt without family support, total federal compensation can compare far better to private practice than base salary alone implies. This is worth investigating specifically rather than dismissing.
  • PSLF fits well generally, since the jobs are at VA facilities, academic centers, and nonprofit rehabilitation hospitals.
  • The lifestyle is genuinely sustainable, daytime and low-call.
  • The patients are frequently people the system serves badly. Access to specialist SCI care and to appropriate equipment tracks insurance status closely, and spinal cord injury falls disproportionately on young men, including through violence. A physician who understands those circumstances is doing something the field needs.

Risks to name honestly:

  • You are choosing the low-paying fork of your own specialty. Inpatient rehabilitation at $260,000–$370,000 against interventional pain at $400,000–$700,000 and above, from the same residency.5 Model that explicitly rather than discovering it.
  • Geography is genuinely constrained. SCI care concentrates at designated centers and VA facilities. If living near family in a specific place is non-negotiable, general PM&R preserves that and this does not.
  • The professional community is thin. With 4.2% of physiatrists holding the certificate, you may be the only SCI physician in your institution.
  • The advocacy work is uncompensated. Letters, appeals, and equipment justifications take real time and generate no revenue.

Bottom line for FLI: one of the most open doors in medicine leading to a boarded subspecialty, comprehensive lifelong medicine, and an employer in the VA whose total compensation package is systematically underrated in salary comparisons. What you pay is the gap against interventional pain and a narrow map. Investigate the VA route seriously, because for someone with large debt and no family cushion it may close much of that gap.

Fun facts

  • Paralysis is the least of it. Bladder, bowel, autonomic, respiratory, and sexual function are all affected, and managing them is what determines how long and how well a person lives.
  • A blocked catheter can cause a stroke. Autonomic dysreflexia in injuries above roughly T6 turns a minor noxious stimulus into a hypertensive emergency, and patients are taught to explain it to emergency clinicians themselves.
  • Bladder management is why people survive. Renal failure was once a leading cause of death after spinal cord injury, and modern neurogenic bladder care changed that.
  • The VA runs the largest SCI system of care in the country, which makes federal employment central to this specialty in a way it is not for most fields.
  • It is held by 4.2% of physiatrists, and only 31.2% of physiatrists hold any subspecialty certificate at all.3
  • Life expectancy after spinal cord injury still falls short of the general population's, and the gap is driven by the secondary conditions this specialty exists to prevent rather than by the injury itself.

Sources

Footnotes

  1. Clinical scope and fellowship content — acute inpatient rehabilitation, neurogenic bladder and bowel management, autonomic dysreflexia, respiratory management in tetraplegia, pressure injury prevention, spasticity and neuropathic pain management, sexual health and fertility, assistive technology prescription, and lifelong surveillance. Composite of published US spinal cord injury medicine fellowship curricula and American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation fellowship materials (https://www.aapmr.org/docs/default-source/career-center/fellowship/roadmap-to-a-fellowship_2023.pdf), accessed 2026. ↩ ↩2

  2. Certification requirements. American Board of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation — Spinal Cord Injury Medicine: applicants for the SCIM examination must satisfactorily complete 12 months of an ACGME-accredited fellowship in spinal cord injury medicine. https://www.abpmr.org/subspecialties/scim (accessed 2026). ⟳ ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  3. Subspecialty prevalence and trends. American Board of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, "Current Status and Trends in Subspecialty Certification in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation," data through December 31, 2019 — 11,421 US ABPMR diplomates held 3,985 active subspecialty certificates across 3,560 individuals, 31.2% of all diplomates; pain medicine 15.5%, sports medicine 6.6%, brain injury medicine 4.8%, spinal cord injury medicine 4.2%, pediatric rehabilitation medicine 2.5%; the average number of new certificates added annually was higher before temporary practice-track eligibility ended than after, significantly so for SCIM, pain medicine, sports medicine, and neuromuscular medicine (P < .05); overall recertification rate 73.4%, higher among fellowship-trained candidates. https://www.abpmr.org/Research/Detail/published-subspecialty-certification-trends ⟳ ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8

  4. The fellowship match. NRMP, Results and Data: Specialties Matching Service, 2026 Appointment Year (revised 22 May 2026), https://www.nrmp.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/SMS_Results_and_Data_2026_Revised-20260522.pdf . Table 1A, spinal cord injury medicine: 11 US MD applicants and 23 applicants in total, 33 positions offered across 22 programs, 11 US MD matches and 22 matches overall, 33.3% of positions filled by US MD graduates and 66.7% filled in all, ranked 69 times by US MD graduates and 148 times by all applicants, 9 programs left with at least one unfilled position. Table 5, Fellowship Matches by Specialty and Applicant Choice: 23 applicants ranked the specialty, 22 matched, 14 (60.9%) to their first choice, 3 (13.0%) to their second, 3 (13.0%) to their third, 2 (8.7%) below that, and 1 (4.3%) unmatched. The five-year fill series in the same report reads 66.7% on 33 positions (2026), 38.2% on 34 (2025), 56.3% on 32 (2024), 64.5% on 31 (2023) and 54.8% on 31 (2022) — a small enough n that a handful of applicants moves the rate ten points, which is why the level rather than the trend is what this page reads off it. Corrected 2026-08-17: the Competitiveness dashboard row and all four bullets in "How competitive is it?" answered the question with ABPMR certification prevalence, 4.2% of diplomates, where a reader expects a fill rate — and an NRMP fill rate for this exact fellowship is published and is more direct. The prevalence figure is kept as the workforce-size fact it is. ⟳ ↩ ↩2

  5. Parent-field figures: PM&R typical comp ~$360k–$390k nationally, with a documented fork between inpatient rehabilitation at ~$260k–$370k and interventional pain and spine at ~$400k–$700k+; 4 years of training and ~12 years from the start of college; moderate competitiveness filling near 100%; burnout in the low-to-mid 40s%; 36.8% women among residents; ~38–39% DO and ~6–8% IMG of matched positions, among the most DO-friendly fields in medicine; among medicine's most controllable lifestyles. See the PM&R profile on this site for the full version. Sources for the non-pay figures above: fill rate and DO and IMG shares, NRMP, Results and Data: 2026 Main Residency Match, May 2026, Table 2, https://www.nrmp.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Main_Match_Results_and_Data-2026.pdf , which shows all 334 PM&R PGY-2 positions filled, 38.3% of them by DOs and 7.5% by IMGs. Burnout: neither published instrument carries a PM&R row. Healthgrades Pro's relay of the Medscape Physician Burnout & Depression Report 2024 (n=9,226, fielded July–October 2023) prints exactly twenty specialties, ten most burned out and ten least, and physical medicine and rehabilitation is in neither, https://resources.healthgrades.com/pro/the-most-and-least-burned-out-physicians-by-specialty . The AMA's 2025 Organizational Biopsy, free and primary and the instrument this site prefers, names nine highest and six lowest and does not name PM&R either, https://www.ama-assn.org/practice-management/physician-health/these-9-physician-specialties-report-highest-burnout-rates . The "low-to-mid 40s%" carried in the dashboard and in Wellbeing is the parent profile's own read across Medscape editions, and the parent profile says in as many words that Medscape does not headline PM&R every year. Corrected 2026-08-17: this footnote asserted that Healthgrades Pro and Advisory Board "both" put PM&R at 46%. Healthgrades publishes no PM&R row and the string 46% does not appear on its page at all, so the figure had no relay behind it — and it also sat outside the low-to-mid 40s% the rest of the page states, which is how the disagreement surfaced. The number is gone and the page now carries one range from one place. On women: AAMC's published specialty tables carry no PM&R row, so this page no longer quotes a practicing figure for the parent field. The ~38% it used to carry has no primary source behind it, and AAMC's all-physician figure is 38.7%, close enough that the two look to have been confused. The training figures are published: ACGME, Data Resource Book, Academic Year 2024-2025, Table C.21, https://www.acgme.org/globalassets/pfassets/publicationsbooks/2024-2025_acgme_databook_document.pdf , puts PM&R residents at 36.8% women and spinal cord injury medicine fellows at 56.0%, both for academic year 2024-25. The SCI figure is 14 women and 11 men out of 25 fellows, in 26 programs. Corrected 2026-08-17: the demographics section opens by promising that every figure below carries its n, and the women's bullet was the one that did not. Its denominator is 25 people, so a single fellow moves it by four points; it is printed now, as the DO and IMG bullets already did. The fellowship's own medical-school mix is in the same book, four tables earlier. Table C.15 (Number of Active Residents by Specialty and Subspecialty and Medical School Type): spinal cord injury medicine, 25 active fellows — 16 US LCME (64.0%), 6 international (24.0%), 3 osteopathic (12.0%), 0 Canadian. And NRMP, Results and Data: Specialties Matching Service, 2026 Appointment Year, Table 2: 33 positions offered, 22 filled — 11 US MD (50.0%), 8 US DO (36.4%), 0 US IMG (0.0%), 3 non-US IMG (13.6%), https://www.nrmp.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/SMS_Results_and_Data_2026_Revised-20260522.pdf . The same report's Table 2 prose names the field twice, among the five specialties with the highest US DO share at 36.4% and among the four with the lowest US IMG share at 0.0%. Corrected 2026-08-17: this page said no published SCI-medicine-specific demographic data existed beyond certification prevalence and the gender split, and then inherited PM&R's ~38–39% DO and ~6–8% IMG, while citing Table C.21 of this same book in this same footnote. Both tables have the row. The DO inheritance survives; the IMG one does not, in both directions at once — the fellowship measures 24.0% international by ACGME's headcount and 0.0% US-citizen IMG by NRMP's match, and neither resembles the parent figure the page was substituting. Correction 2026-08-13: this page previously said no published subspecialty figure existed and put parent PM&R at "~38% practicing and higher among residents," in the Quick dashboard and in Who's in the field. A fellowship figure exists, and the resident share runs below 38% rather than above it. ⟳ ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10

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