what's happening to general surgery?

[scrub monkey]

according to the numbers from the regional match stats, only 85% of available general surgery spots filled.

what are surgery programs going to do? with so many unfilled positions and the new 80 hr work week restrictions, it looks like a lot of programs are going to be in a bind.

maybe this will lead to better compensation for surgeons in the future, as the need for them increases? it definitely looks like a low point now for general surg.

other stats from the numbers given:
family practice - 80% filled
internal med - 93% filled
peds - 94% filled
psych - 93% filled
ob/gyn - 92% filled
ortho - 99% filled
derm - 100% filled
rad onc - 100% filled

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[nrmp2003]

actually, there are only 9 unmatched categorical spots in general surgery.

 

[droliver]

scrub monkey,
you completely misinterpreted those stats for surgery (the more detailed info wasn't available when you made that conclusion). These large #'s of unfilled programs are for the most part prelim position, which are not real positions in the traditional sense. The unfilled categorical # of spots is the real index here & as you can see it was way,way down (continuing a 3 year trend now). I'm not sure what the denominator is for categorical positions, but that prob. represents a match rate in the upper 90's for those positions. This continued downward trend in the unfilled spots was reflected by the word many PD's were noting during the interview season by saying that the # of applicants was spiking 20-30% o their programs. What is not clear neccessarily from this match is whether the matching applicants have similar USMLE #'s to previous years which I guess would be some kind of proxy for how strong the pool is in any given year (not a perfect guage by any means)

 

[Celiac Plexus]

Originally posted by nrmp2003
actually, there are only 9 unmatched categorical spots in general surgery.

There are 11 unfilled categorical general surgery slots in 9 programs.

 

[scrub monkey]

oops. sorry about that.

i had assumed (wrongly) that the numbers were for categorical spots - didn't think about the preliminary positions. that's why the numbers looked so surprising.

if there are only 11 or so unfilled categorical spots, it actually looks like general surgery is getting more (not less) competitive and desirable.