Pediatrics Taxed in This Year’s Match with 249 Unfilled Positions

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Unfilled positions were spread across more than 60 pediatric residency programs

by
Jennifer Henderson
,
Enterprise & Investigative Writer, MedPage Today

March 13, 2024

Amid this year’s Match Week, the specialty of pediatrics saw increasingly large numbers of unfilled positions and programs, MedPage Today has learned.

Across 66 unfilled programs, there were 249 unfilled positions, according to an email from the Association of Pediatric Program Directors (APPD) that was sent to pediatric residency program directors and subsequently viewed by MedPage Today.

Patricia Poitevien, MD, MSc, of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, who serves as president of APPD, confirmed to MedPage Today that the number of unfilled positions and programs this year is significantly higher than in recent years.

She told MedPage Today in an email that data from 2022 show 81 positions and 28 programs were unfilled that year; in 2023 there were 86 positions and 30 programs unfilled — evidence that numbers have been rising in recent years, but not “as dramatically as this year’s anticipated rise,” she added.

Poitevien said that it is “hard to speculate” about what factors may be contributing to the increased number of unfilled positions and programs “because the problem is multifactorial.”

There has been a “steady increase” in the number of positions and programs over the last several years, she said. For instance, in 2021, there were 2,901 positions and 222 programs; in 2022, 2,942 positions and 235 programs; and in 2023, 2,986 positions and 248 programs.

However, “that has been happening in the context of decreased interest in pediatrics,” she said.

“In 2020, we had 4,936 student applicants into pediatrics (including MD, DO, and IMG [international medical graduates]),” Poitevien said. “In 2022, that dropped to 4,809; in 2023 it was 4,651 and in 2024 it was 4,379.”

“What is so alarming about this is that pediatric workforce needs are increasing,” she said.

She pointed to a recent report from the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine that addresses this issue as well as a workforce initiative launched by the Association for Medical School Pediatric Department Chairs in 2020.

“We suspect there are financial reasons for this, such as lack of parity in reimbursement for pediatric physician services when compared to our adult colleagues as well as lack of knowledge and understanding about the field of pediatrics due to limited exposure medical students receive while in school,” Poitevien added.

Prior to this week, there were indeed those who had predicted pediatrics would see a significant impact in this year’s Match.

Bryan Carmody, MD, MPH, of Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, tweeted earlier this week that he “predicted last year, and again this fall, that [emergency medicine] would recover from last year’s ‘SOAP [Supplemental Offer and Acceptance Program] crisis’ — and that pediatrics would be hit next.”

Last year, emergency medicine had more than 550 unfilled positions. Contributing factors included workforce projections, increased clinical demands, emergency department boarding, economic challenges, the pandemic, and the corporatization of medicine, as MedPage Today previously reported.

As for where the final numbers for pediatrics will land this year, unmatched medical students have an opportunity to secure unfilled positions — whether that be in pediatrics or another specialty — through SOAP.