From Stat News:
By Usha Lee McFarling
Dec. 13, 2021
… While medicine as a whole, and even other elite specialties like dermatology, thoracic surgery, and otolaryngology, has begun to increase the number of people of color in its ranks, orthopedics’ numbers have barely budged. Less than 2% of those practicing in the field are Black, just 2.2% are Hispanic, and 0.4% are Native American. Even Asian American physicians, a group considered overrepresented in medicine, are much scarcer in orthopedics, making up just 6.7% of these specialists.
At $511,000 in 2020, orthopedic specialists rank at the top of the medical pay charts, along with plastic surgeons, according to Dark Daily for pathologists. They averaged the highest bonus at $116,000.
Orthopedics is also the most male of specialties:
Medscape found that women MDs chose certain medical specialties more often than others, including pathology, which ranked eighth. The top eight specialties employing female physicians are:
Pediatrics: 61%
Obstetrics/gynecology: 59%
Diabetes/endocrinology: 50%
Family medicine: 47%
Dermatology: 46%
Infectious diseases: 46%
Internal medicine: 44%
Pathology: 43%Specialties with the fewest female physicians are:
Plastic and general surgery: 20%
Cardiology: 14%
Urology: 11%
Orthopedics/orthopedics surgery: 9%
Orthopedic surgeons are kind of the carpenters of surgery, working on the musculoskeletal system. At the top of the game are the famous sports surgeons who have their famous athlete patients fly into Aspen or Vail to be operated upon.
Perhaps the orthopedic surgeon best known to the general public was Dr. Frank Jobe (1925-2014), who invented the Tommy John operation for baseball players in 1974. Not too surprisingly, I see that he had landed behind enemy lines in a glider on D-Day, then was captured at the Battle of the Bulge, and then escaped.
So I’m guessing that orthopedic surgeons tend to be winners.
