19: Orthopedic Surgery Match Data Deep Dive

Session 19

Today, I'm going to do a deep dive into some match data for Orthopedic Surgery, which is one of the more competitive specialties out there. Let's look at the data to see if this holds true and find out who you can set yourself up for success early on if this is something you’re interested in.

In general, Orthopedic Surgery is a surgical specialty. It's a five-year residency with a lot of subspecialties after that. I had Dr. Muppavurapu to talk about being a hand surgeon back in Episode 05 and he talked about the many other things you can do like joints, spine, hand, and so much more. Today we're going to talk generically about ortho residency matching as a medical student.

[02:55] Number of Programs, Spots, U.S. Seniors

NRMP is the MD application. (If you're reading this way in the future, words like ACGME and AOA won't really mean much because the MD and DO residency programs will have merged assuming all goes well as planned out for 2020.)

Looking at Table 1 for the NRMP Results and Data 2016 Main Residency Match, there are 163 programs in the country for orthopedic surgery. Just to give you an idea of the number of programs for other specialties, Anesthesiology had 119 PGY-1 spots and 77 PGY-2 spots, a total of 196 compared to 163 for Orthopedic Surgery. Neurosurgery had 105 programs, Emergency Medicine had 174 programs. This somehow gives you an idea of how many programs are out there for Orthopedic Surgery.

Another important number to look at here is the number of spots available. Orthopedic Surgery had 163 programs with 717 different spots available so that's average of 4.398 spot per program. Comparing to other programs, Emergency Medicine had only 11 more programs but more than double the number of spots offered.

Out of the 63 programs for Orthopedic Surgery, none of the programs went unfilled. Many residency programs here had 100% fill rate so it's not unusual but again, an important thing to keep in mind.

As you think about your specialty, how competitive is it for you to match into? How spots are going to be available? If you don't match for some reason, can you do the Supplemental Offer and Acceptance Program (SOAP)? Can you find an open program? For something competitive like Orthopedics, you probably won't be able to find one and it's going to be much, much harder for programs that typically go completely filled.

There were 717 available spots while there were 1,058 total applicants. 874 of those were U.S. Seniors. Note that the number of U.S. Seniors applying are even more than the spots offered. Out of the number of students that matched, 650 were U.S. Seniors. That means U.S. Seniors make up 90.6% of students that matched into orthopedic residency. U.S. Seniors here are allopathic U.S. Seniors (students at MD Programs).

Ortho do not have any programs that match directly into PGY-2 positions. They are all categorical spots where you apply for ortho, you do your internship right there in that one program for five years.

[07:25] Allopathic and Osteopathic Students

There is always this DO versus MD "competitiveness" going on in the premed world. Here is where there is some bias among residencies. Orthopedic Surgery has been known historically as one of the biggest residency programs out there that has some negative bias towards DOs.

NRMP Match Data Table 2 shows matches by specialty in applicant type and looking at Orthopedic Surgery with 717 positions, 717 filled, 650 were U.S. Allopathic Seniors, 49 were U.S. Grads (this refers to those who either took some time o