Session 14

Today, we break down the match data, compensation surveys, and lifestyle reports for Emergency Medicine. If you’re interested in EM, this is a must listen.

I also talked about dove into match data back in session 11 specifically on Anesthesiology and now I'm going to dive into Emergency Medicine.

If you follow the NRMP results, Anesthesiology is first in the alphabetical order, followed by Child Neurology and then third, Dermatology. However, these two are relatively smaller so I'll reserve a separate discussion on the smaller programs at a later date. For now, let's focus on Emergency Medicine, which is a very popular specialty these days.

[02:05] Emergency Medicine at a Glance

Back in Session 2, I was able to talk to an Emergency Medicine physician and learned that because of the shift work and the amount of work, it has become popular. What is considered full-time for an Emergency Medicine physician is about 15-16 shifts a month. That is equivalent to three business weeks (Monday through Friday, five days times three) which means an extra whole week off per month. Of course shift work comes with some negatives which were also mentioned in that episode.

[03:10] NRMP Match Data for 2016

First, check out this 120-page PDF document called, Main Match Results and Data for 2016. Looking at Table 1 (page 12 of 120) for this NRMP match data, Emergency Medicine has 174 programs, which means it has 55 more programs compared to Anesthesia with 119 programs.

Of those 174 programs, there are 1,895 spots and this works out to almost eleven spots per program. It is a very competitive and a very, very wanted specialty that out of those 174 programs, only one program went unfilled.

Number of applicants: 2,476
Number of available spots: 1,895
Number of applicants that matched: 1,894
Number unfilled: 1
Number of U.S. Seniors that matched: 1,486 (78.5%)

As compared with Anesthesiology, 72% of those that matched were U.S. Seniors. Hence, Emergency Medicine is matching more U.S.-based Seniors going into Emergency Medicine. This possible means that there are less international students applying for Emergency Medicine and less students who didn't match right away.

Looking at the total number of matches which is 1,894 (out of 1,895 positions offered), there was one spot in one program that went unfilled. This suggests how very competitive the specialty is with 99% were filled for Emergency Medicine.

[06:18] Emergency Medicine and PGY1 Positions

Last time, when I talked about Anesthesiology, Table 1 has PGY1 positions, PGY2 positions, and physician positions. Emergency Medicine, however, only has PGY1 positions listed in Table 1.0, which means that you don't go to do an internship separate from your Emergency Medicine residency because it's all built into the one main residency.

It can be very confusing considering that different specialties have different terminologies. As with Emergency Medicine, it does not have other internship outside the program so there are are no PGY2 positions or physician positions available to apply to.

[07:35] Applicant Types in Emergency Medicine

Table 2 (page 16 of 120) of the 2016 NRMP match data breaks down the specialty and applicant type. For Emergency Medicine:

Number of filled positions: 1,894
% of U.S. Seniors that filled: 78.5%
Number of (non-Senior) U.S. Grad: 73 (almost 4%) - U.S. Grad means that you either took time off between trying to match and graduating from medical school. It's either you didn't try to match during your senior year of medical school or you didn't match and you...