Match Statistics - 2015

I like numbers. Comes from a background in math, I suppose.

So when the yearly match statistics from CaRMS come out, I get a little more excited than a normal person probably should, even someone who's future may be influenced by those numbers.

Each year, there are surprises in the match stats. Many of these are one-time anomalies, quirks that reverse themselves the year after. Some, however, continue trends or herald the start of new ones. This year had a few surprises which may turn into longer-run trends. Here were the ones I found most interesting.

1) Psychiatry got more competitive - while it expanded.

We need more psychiatrists. And we need them in low-service areas (psychiatrists in well-served areas tend to see very few patients). Mental health is just too important to continue in its current, underserviced state. This year match rates to Psych dropped, despite a moderate expansion of residency positions. Far from a one-time change, this seems to reflect a multi-year trend, albeit with a greater-than-expected change this year. From conversations with classmates, I can see Psych remaining more competitive than in past years.

The reasons for this increase in competitiveness are probably multi-faceted, but I think the big ones are jobs, work hours, and the overall growth of the field. Right now, only a few specialties have a good job market. Psych is one of them. Few specialties have low working hours. Psych is also one of them, depending on individual circumstances. Psych is also evolving quickly as a field, with meaningful advances in diagnostics and management of many psychiatric conditions, and more advancements on the way.

Psych still has a very challenging patient population and the pay is on the low end for physicians. It's encouraging to see that despite these downsides, the field's popularity is growing

2) Some surgical specialties not all that competitive this year.

If Psych was the surprise competitive specialty, Orthopedic Surgery, Neurosurgery and Urology were the surprise uncompetitive specialties, at least by surgery standards. And that's with a slight reduction in the number of residency spots for these specialties.

The reasons for this change likely parallel those for Psych - bad job market (especially in Neurosurg) combined with horrendous working hours (especially in Neurosurg). These are still surgical specialties so they've retained some popularity, but specialties should take note: students are not overly eager to struggle through a brutal residency without a reasonable payoff at the end.

3) What happened in Public Health?

I have little to say here - Public Health is a small field when it comes to residency positions, but clearly is in demand. Virtually half those who wanted a Public Health program failed to match to it.

There aren't too many specialties I have to research before commenting on, but I had to do some reading on Public Health as a specialty. After doing so, I'm still baffled. Public Health is a vitally important subject, but I have no idea why it would require an MD or a separate residency (as opposed to a Master's) to participate in. That makes its popularity confusing to me. If a person really wanted to work in public health, why not do a PhD in the field instead of an MD? If they wanted clinical practice plus a hand in public health, why not something like a Family Medicine residency + a Master's? An MD with a specialization in Public Health appears to lack the deeper training of the first route and similarly lacks the clinical acumen of the second, while taking longer to complete than either.

I feel like I'm missing something and would greatly appreciate being filled in on where I've gone wrong. It's very hard for me to tell why a specialty is so popular when I'm still figuring out why it exists at all.