User login
This year’s Specialty Match Day was highlighted by the addition of four new programs and 13 new fellowship positions for future rheumatologists.
For the 2020 appointment year, there were 249 fellowships in rheumatology available, up from 236 in the previous year. It continues a trend of an increasing number of fellowship slots. There were 221 slots available in the 2018 appointment year.
There were 242 slots filled in the 2020 appointment year, up from 233 in the previous year and 218 from two appointment years ago.
“The overall message from the match this year in rheumatology is that it really was a very good, very successful match,” Beth Jonas, MD, chair of the American College of Rheumatology’s Committee on Training and Workforce Issues, said in an interview. “Rheumatology continues to be extremely strong in terms of its ability to attract excellent physicians to the subspecialty, so we are really very, very happy about that.”
She also applauded the addition of the four new programs and 13 new fellowship slots.
“We’ve been working very hard to try and figure out ways to increase slots,” said Dr. Jonas, a professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She noted that while more needs to be done to address future workforce needs, even the small increases “are meaningful. There is the knowledge out there that there is a workforce shortage in rheumatology. There certainly are a lot of people who would like to become rheumatologists. There is a little bit of a bottleneck here at the level of training slots to get interested and qualified applicants into the match and matched with programs, so we’ve had some marginal increases there.”
One number that decreased this year was the number of specialty applicants who stated they preferred to be in a rheumatology program, which decreased to 335 applicants in the 2020 appointment year from 358 in the 2019 application year. Of the 335 applicants that stated rheumatology as the preferred specialty, 239 received fellowships in rheumatology, 2 were matched to other specialties, and 94 did not match into any program.
The decrease in applicants did not concern Dr. Jonas.
“It is still pretty robust and our match rate is in the low 70s, which makes it one of the most competitive subspecialties in internal medicine, up there with cardiology and gastroenterology,” she said. “It doesn’t really worry me.”
She opined that the reason could be that the “people who might have been not strong candidates might have just not applied because it is so competitive now,” but she cautioned that it is just musings with no specific data to say exactly what is causing the decrease in applications.
She also was not concerned that the number of unfulfilled slots increased this year compared with the previous 2 years.
“The programs that did not fill tended to be the ones that were highly focused on research,” she said. “It is not surprising that there were a couple of slots left empty. We know for certain that of all of the people who applied to rheumatology fellowships, the vast majority are interested in clinical rheumatology, in clinical care, so there are fewer applicants out there that are really interested in research slots.”
Overall across all specialties, there were 6,286 applicants with rank for 5,576 positions in appointment year 2020, of which 4,909 were matched to a specialty program. The fill rate increased slightly to 88% from 87.8% in the previous year, when there were 5,881 applicants for 5,125 program slots with 4,579 positions filled.
SOURCE: National Resident Matching Program.
This year’s Specialty Match Day was highlighted by the addition of four new programs and 13 new fellowship positions for future rheumatologists.
For the 2020 appointment year, there were 249 fellowships in rheumatology available, up from 236 in the previous year. It continues a trend of an increasing number of fellowship slots. There were 221 slots available in the 2018 appointment year.
There were 242 slots filled in the 2020 appointment year, up from 233 in the previous year and 218 from two appointment years ago.
“The overall message from the match this year in rheumatology is that it really was a very good, very successful match,” Beth Jonas, MD, chair of the American College of Rheumatology’s Committee on Training and Workforce Issues, said in an interview. “Rheumatology continues to be extremely strong in terms of its ability to attract excellent physicians to the subspecialty, so we are really very, very happy about that.”
She also applauded the addition of the four new programs and 13 new fellowship slots.
“We’ve been working very hard to try and figure out ways to increase slots,” said Dr. Jonas, a professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She noted that while more needs to be done to address future workforce needs, even the small increases “are meaningful. There is the knowledge out there that there is a workforce shortage in rheumatology. There certainly are a lot of people who would like to become rheumatologists. There is a little bit of a bottleneck here at the level of training slots to get interested and qualified applicants into the match and matched with programs, so we’ve had some marginal increases there.”
One number that decreased this year was the number of specialty applicants who stated they preferred to be in a rheumatology program, which decreased to 335 applicants in the 2020 appointment year from 358 in the 2019 application year. Of the 335 applicants that stated rheumatology as the preferred specialty, 239 received fellowships in rheumatology, 2 were matched to other specialties, and 94 did not match into any program.
The decrease in applicants did not concern Dr. Jonas.
“It is still pretty robust and our match rate is in the low 70s, which makes it one of the most competitive subspecialties in internal medicine, up there with cardiology and gastroenterology,” she said. “It doesn’t really worry me.”
She opined that the reason could be that the “people who might have been not strong candidates might have just not applied because it is so competitive now,” but she cautioned that it is just musings with no specific data to say exactly what is causing the decrease in applications.
She also was not concerned that the number of unfulfilled slots increased this year compared with the previous 2 years.
“The programs that did not fill tended to be the ones that were highly focused on research,” she said. “It is not surprising that there were a couple of slots left empty. We know for certain that of all of the people who applied to rheumatology fellowships, the vast majority are interested in clinical rheumatology, in clinical care, so there are fewer applicants out there that are really interested in research slots.”
Overall across all specialties, there were 6,286 applicants with rank for 5,576 positions in appointment year 2020, of which 4,909 were matched to a specialty program. The fill rate increased slightly to 88% from 87.8% in the previous year, when there were 5,881 applicants for 5,125 program slots with 4,579 positions filled.
SOURCE: National Resident Matching Program.
This year’s Specialty Match Day was highlighted by the addition of four new programs and 13 new fellowship positions for future rheumatologists.
For the 2020 appointment year, there were 249 fellowships in rheumatology available, up from 236 in the previous year. It continues a trend of an increasing number of fellowship slots. There were 221 slots available in the 2018 appointment year.
There were 242 slots filled in the 2020 appointment year, up from 233 in the previous year and 218 from two appointment years ago.
“The overall message from the match this year in rheumatology is that it really was a very good, very successful match,” Beth Jonas, MD, chair of the American College of Rheumatology’s Committee on Training and Workforce Issues, said in an interview. “Rheumatology continues to be extremely strong in terms of its ability to attract excellent physicians to the subspecialty, so we are really very, very happy about that.”
She also applauded the addition of the four new programs and 13 new fellowship slots.
“We’ve been working very hard to try and figure out ways to increase slots,” said Dr. Jonas, a professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She noted that while more needs to be done to address future workforce needs, even the small increases “are meaningful. There is the knowledge out there that there is a workforce shortage in rheumatology. There certainly are a lot of people who would like to become rheumatologists. There is a little bit of a bottleneck here at the level of training slots to get interested and qualified applicants into the match and matched with programs, so we’ve had some marginal increases there.”
One number that decreased this year was the number of specialty applicants who stated they preferred to be in a rheumatology program, which decreased to 335 applicants in the 2020 appointment year from 358 in the 2019 application year. Of the 335 applicants that stated rheumatology as the preferred specialty, 239 received fellowships in rheumatology, 2 were matched to other specialties, and 94 did not match into any program.
The decrease in applicants did not concern Dr. Jonas.
“It is still pretty robust and our match rate is in the low 70s, which makes it one of the most competitive subspecialties in internal medicine, up there with cardiology and gastroenterology,” she said. “It doesn’t really worry me.”
She opined that the reason could be that the “people who might have been not strong candidates might have just not applied because it is so competitive now,” but she cautioned that it is just musings with no specific data to say exactly what is causing the decrease in applications.
She also was not concerned that the number of unfulfilled slots increased this year compared with the previous 2 years.
“The programs that did not fill tended to be the ones that were highly focused on research,” she said. “It is not surprising that there were a couple of slots left empty. We know for certain that of all of the people who applied to rheumatology fellowships, the vast majority are interested in clinical rheumatology, in clinical care, so there are fewer applicants out there that are really interested in research slots.”
Overall across all specialties, there were 6,286 applicants with rank for 5,576 positions in appointment year 2020, of which 4,909 were matched to a specialty program. The fill rate increased slightly to 88% from 87.8% in the previous year, when there were 5,881 applicants for 5,125 program slots with 4,579 positions filled.
SOURCE: National Resident Matching Program.