By specialty: resident doctors’ pay and training places.

This compilation brings together four figures for 29 medical specialties: how much a resident doctor earns during training, how much job advertisements offer per hour in the specialty, how many training places were opened in the latest autumn recruitment and how many doctors applied for one place. Resident pay comes from a regulation and is exact. The rate from advertisements is an estimate based on offers, not on payments.

The 29 specialties compared

The specialties are divided into two groups according to the minister of health’s priority list, because resident pay depends on it. The Centre of Postgraduate Medical Education (CMKP), which runs the recruitment, gave the number of candidates per place only for the most sought-after specialties, and about the least sought-after it wrote that there were more places than applicants. For the others there is a dash.

The last column concerns the end of training: what share of attempts at the test part of the State Specialisation Examination (PES) in 2023–2025 scored at least 60%, i.e. passed the test. Among the specialties in the table, the lowest share is in occupational medicine (59.6% of 166 attempts) and the highest in lung diseases (94.4% of 195). Repeat attempts are included. The examination also has an oral part, but the Medical Examinations Centre (CEM) does not publish its results, so this is not the share of people who became specialists.¹

The most candidates per place were in specialties outside the priority list

Resident pay, the rate in job advertisements from 2023, residency and non-residency places and candidates per place in the autumn 2025 session, and the share of PES test attempts passed in 2023–2025 — 29 specialties in two groups.

Specialty	Rate in job ads2023, PLN/h	Residency placesautumn 2025	Non-residencyautumn 2025	Candidates per placeautumn 2025	PES test passed2023–2025, %
Not on the priority list · 14 specialtiesresident: PLN 10,595.24, after two years PLN 10,913.10
Plastic surgery	—	7	10	7.47	—
Dermatology and venereology	287	35	15	6.94	70.8
Endocrinology	252	25	26	5.88	82.6
Gastroenterology	232	16	21	3.86	87.9
Urology	242	62	12	2.38	—
Ophthalmology	216	79	72	2.06	76.3
Cardiology	247	143	496	—	76.5
Radiology and diagnostic imaging	223	100	208	—	80.8
Orthopaedics and traumatology of the musculoskeletal system	214	101	464	—	83.4
Otorhinolaryngology	215	71	4	—	68.3
Obstetrics and gynaecology	206	144	202	—	88.2
Lung diseases	260	104	41	—	94.4
Occupational medicine	261	31	47	—	59.6
Medical rehabilitation	155	207	273	< 1	63.4
Priority specialties · 15 of 23resident: PLN 11,654.76, after two years PLN 12,714.29
Anaesthesiology and intensive care	201	225	57	—	77.5
General surgery	206	378	150	—	68.9
Clinical oncology	—	214	110	—	70.0
Haematology	—	116	49	—	78.7
Psychiatry	304	315	90	—	80.2
Neurology	217	349	214	—	80.4
Palliative medicine	—	25	95	—	93.8
Paediatrics	175	516	260	—	83.1
Family medicine	178	863	981	—	74.3
Infectious diseases	—	151	84	< 1	73.3
Geriatrics	—	84	90	< 1	79.4
Neonatology	—	149	102	< 1	93.5
Internal medicine	173	755	2,329	< 1	73.2
Emergency medicine	186	307	266	< 1	70.6
Pathology	—	93	24	< 1	68.4

Sources: pay — Ministry of Health regulation, Dz.U. 2026 item 856; rates — report “Lekarze – oferty pracy” for 2023, p. 19; places — CMKP, list for the autumn 2025 session (28.08.2025); candidates — compilation by the CMKP director, via Beauty Razem, 10.12.2025; PES test — CEM, results of the PES test part, our own calculation.

Who is a resident

A resident is a doctor or dentist undergoing specialist training in the residency mode. They have an employment contract with the facility providing the training, concluded for the period required by the specialisation programme.² Their base salary, the on-call duty covered by the programme and the contributions are financed by the minister of health from the state budget.³

The minister allocates residency places for each qualification procedure. A doctor submits an application in the Training Monitoring System (System Monitorowania Kształcenia) and may list up to 15 options in it: specialty, voivodeship (region) and training mode. The order for residencies is decided by the result of the Medical Final Examination (LEK; for dentists — the Dental Final Examination, LDEK), and a doctorate and scientific publications give extra points.⁴

Not every doctor in specialist training is a resident. In the non-residency mode, doctors train on vacant places outside the minister’s pool — among other things under an employment contract or a civil-law contract with a facility, on paid training leave or with a scholarship funded by a healthcare provider. They do not then receive pay from the minister’s budget, and a civil-law contract for training may not provide for less than the minimum hourly rate.²

A resident may also work outside the residency. In specialist outpatient clinics financed by the NFZ, a doctor in specialist training may see patients independently after completing the first year of training — in ophthalmology and in dermatology and venereology after completing the second — once the head of the specialisation confirms their knowledge and skills.⁵ In job advertisements from 2023, residents were offered on average PLN 172 (≈ €39) an hour. Offers for residents after the second or third year, mainly in outpatient clinics, were similar to offers for specialists.⁶

Resident pay: two rates

How much a resident earns is set by the minister of health in a regulation. The act requires this amount to differ by specialty, with particular regard to priority specialties, and by year of training.³ From 1 July 2026 there are two rates.⁷

The starting point is the statutory minimum pay of a doctor without a specialisation: a coefficient of 1.19 times the base amount of PLN 8,903.56 (≈ €2,020), i.e. PLN 10,595.24 (≈ €2,400).⁸ The base amount is the average wage in the economy in the previous year and changes every year on 1 July (see the pay scale in healthcare).⁹ The amounts in the regulation show that in a priority specialty a resident receives 10% more than this base, and after two years 20% more. In the other specialties pay rises by 3% after two years. The difference between the groups is therefore PLN 1,059.52 (≈ €240) a month at the start of training and PLN 1,801.19 (≈ €409) after two years.

The priority list: 23 specialties

Priority specialties are named in a separate regulation of the minister of health of 27 December 2022. The only later change was the addition of neurology from 1 July 2023.¹⁰ The list has 23 items (as of 15 October 2026), and the regulation on pay repeats the same list.⁷

The table includes 15 specialties from this list. The remaining 8 are paediatric surgery, surgical oncology, paediatric cardiology, paediatric neurology, paediatric oncology and haematology, child and adolescent psychiatry, radiation oncology and paediatric dentistry — paediatric and oncological specialties and a specialty for dentists.

Supplement for a commitment to work in Poland

Every resident, not only in a priority specialty, may declare that after obtaining the specialisation they will work in Poland for a total of 2 years out of the following 5, at least full-time, in a facility providing services financed from public funds. In return their base salary rises by PLN 700 (≈ €159) a month in a priority specialty and by PLN 600 (≈ €136) in the others.¹¹ With the supplement, a resident in a priority specialty receives PLN 12,354.76 (≈ €2,800) in the first two years, and in the other specialties — PLN 11,195.24 (≈ €2,540). The supplement is colloquially called the “patriotic voucher” (bon patriotyczny).

If the doctor does not keep the commitment or breaks off the specialisation programme, the voivode (the government’s representative in the region) imposes a penalty equal to 75% of the total supplements received. The penalty decreases in proportion to the period the doctor has worked in line with the declaration. Anyone who received the supplement for less time than the specialisation lasted has a proportionally shorter commitment, and the supplement can be given up — pay then falls from the following month.¹² An example: a resident in a priority specialty who received the supplement for 60 months and did not work a single day under the commitment will pay PLN 31,500 (≈ €7,150).

Candidates and rates in job advertisements

None of the ten most sought-after specialties named by the director of the CMKP is on the priority list. The table includes 6 of them (candidates per place in brackets): plastic surgery (7.47), dermatology and venereology (6.94), endocrinology (5.88), gastroenterology (3.86), urology (2.38) and ophthalmology (2.06).¹³ Together they had 224 residency places — less than half the pool for paediatrics alone (516).¹⁴

At the other end, the CMKP named ten specialties in which there were more places than applicants. Seven of them are on the priority list — in the table infectious diseases, geriatrics, neonatology, internal medicine, emergency medicine and pathology, outside the table radiation oncology. Three are not on the list: medical rehabilitation, nuclear medicine and nephrology.¹³

Rates in advertisements follow a similar pattern, though with exceptions. In 2023 the middle specialty outside the list had an average of PLN 232 (≈ €53) an hour in advertisements, and the middle priority specialty — PLN 194 (≈ €44) an hour (the median of the average rates of the specialties in the table).⁶ The highest average, however, was for psychiatry, which is on the list: PLN 304 (≈ €69) an hour. The report’s authors note that it was pushed up by offers from one network of facilities at PLN 400 an hour. The lowest was for medical rehabilitation, which is not on the list: PLN 155 (≈ €35) an hour. Lung diseases (PLN 260 (≈ €59) an hour) and occupational medicine (PLN 261 (≈ €59) an hour) had higher rates than ophthalmology or gastroenterology, and they are not among the most sought-after specialties. For plastic surgery, which had the most candidates, the report gives no rate.

The table shows a coincidence, not a cause. Higher pay in a priority specialty — by PLN 1,059.52 (≈ €240) a month at the start of training — does not reverse the proportions: the most candidates per place are in specialties outside the list. The data do not say, however, what decides the choice. They do not cover, for example, working conditions after the specialisation or how much doctors in a given specialty earn in total.

Specialist training places

For the autumn 2025 session the CMKP listed 6,653 residency places and 7,945 non-residency places.¹⁴ Doctors submitted 7,995 formally correct applications. After two stages, 5,483 doctors confirmed that they had accepted a place: 4,096 in a residency and 1,387 in the non-residency mode.¹⁵ So 62% of residencies and 17% of non-residency places were taken. In an additional, third stage — only for residencies in priority specialties — another 181 doctors accepted a place.¹³

After two stages, 2,512 applicants had not confirmed accepting any place, and 2,557 residencies remained vacant. The pool of residencies is concentrated in priority specialties: in the table they have 4,540 of the 5,665 residency places (80%). The largest pools were only partly filled. Among the ten specialties for which the CMKP gave the number of doctors accepted, almost all residencies were taken in three specialties outside the priority list and in anaesthesiology.

In cardiology, orthopaedics and gynaecology almost all residencies were filled, in internal medicine — half

1. Orthopaedics and traumatology · 97 of 101 · not on the list96%
2. Cardiology · 137 of 143 · not on the list96%
3. Obstetrics and gynaecology · 137 of 144 · not on the list95%
4. Anaesthesiology · 210 of 22593%
5. Psychiatry · 281 of 31589%
6. Neurology · 246 of 34970%
7. General surgery · 250 of 37866%
8. Paediatrics · 327 of 51663%
9. Family medicine · 507 of 86359%
10. Internal medicine · 376 of 75550%

Non-residency places mostly remain empty: in family medicine 66 of 981 were taken, in cardiology 93 of 496, in orthopaedics 80 of 464. It is different in ophthalmology (65 of 72), occupational medicine (34 of 47) and radiology (124 of 208) — there doctors also take places without pay from the minister’s budget.¹⁵

The bottleneck is therefore not a lack of places in general, but how they are distributed. Most residencies are in specialties in which some of them remain empty, while in the most sought-after ones the pools are counted in tens. How admissions to medical school translate into the number of doctors in the following decades is shown by the doctor supply simulator (in Polish), and the causes of shortages are discussed in the analysis Why Poland is short of doctors.

The priority list and forecasts of shortages

In its health needs maps, the Ministry of Health compares how many doctors will complete a specialisation in a given specialty with the number of those who will reach retirement age. By 2028 it forecasts the largest gap in internal medicine and general surgery. There is also to be a shortfall in specialties outside the priority list: occupational medicine, medical rehabilitation, lung diseases, balneology and otorhinolaryngology. In family medicine and paediatrics, which are on the list, more new specialists are expected than will reach retirement age.¹⁶

5 of 9 specialties with a forecast gap are outside the priority list

	New specialists minus those reaching retirement age, by 2028	On the priority list
Internal medicine	−1,717	yes
General surgery	−507	yes
Occupational medicine	−241	no
Medical rehabilitation	−187	no
Lung diseases	−154	no
Balneology and physical medicine	−53	no
Otorhinolaryngology	−50	no
Paediatric surgery	−42	yes
Infectious diseases	−12	yes
Paediatrics	+51	yes
Family medicine	+891	yes

Notes 16laws, data and statements we relied on

1. Medical Examinations Centre, results of the PES test part (in Polish) — lists of results of the sessions from spring 2023 to autumn 2025 by specialty (one code number = one attempt); the share is our own calculation. The 60% threshold and the rule that the CEM publishes only test results: Act on the professions of physician and dentist (in Polish), Article 16s(4) and Article 16w(1). ↩

2. Act on the professions of physician and dentist, Article 16h(1)–(2) (in Polish) — the employment contract in the residency mode and the forms of training in the non-residency mode. ↩ ↩²

3. Act of 5 December 1996 on the professions of physician and dentist (in Polish; consolidated text Dz.U. 2026 item 37), Article 16j(1)–(5) — financing of residency and the rules for setting pay. ↩ ↩²

4. Act on the professions of physician and dentist, Article 16c(1d) and (10) (in Polish) — the options in the application and the criteria of the competitive procedure. ↩

5. Regulation of the Minister of Health of 6 November 2013 on guaranteed services in specialist outpatient care, § 2(3)(b) and (c) (consolidated text Dz.U. 2016 item 357, as amended; in Polish) — definition of a doctor in specialist training who may work in an outpatient clinic. ↩

6. Report “PRACA. Lekarze – oferty pracy za cały 2023 rok” (“WORK. Doctors – job offers for the whole of 2023”), by the Lekarze – oferty pracy group, partner: the All-Poland Doctors’ Trade Union (OZZL) (PDF, in Polish) — 1,473 advertisements with an hourly rate; rates by career stage pp. 15–16, by specialty pp. 17–19. ↩ ↩²

7. Regulation of the Minister of Health of 25 June 2026 on the amount of the basic monthly salary of doctors and dentists undergoing specialist training as residents, Dz.U. 2026 item 856 (in Polish) — § 1 (23 priority specialties and their rates), § 2 (other specialties); in force from 1 July 2026. ↩ ↩²

8. Prawo.pl, “Od 1 lipca lekarze rezydenci zarobią więcej — jest projekt” (“From 1 July resident doctors will earn more — there is a draft”, in Polish), 05.05.2026 — the ministry’s calculation in the draft: a coefficient of 1.19 times the average wage for 2025. ↩

9. Act of 8 June 2017 on the method of setting the lowest base salary of certain employees of healthcare providers (in Polish; ISAP) — the base amount and the coefficient of 1.19 for a doctor without a specialisation. ↩

10. Regulation of the Minister of Health of 27 December 2022 on designating priority fields of medicine, Dz.U. 2022 item 2814 (in Polish); neurology added from 1 July 2023 — Dz.U. 2023 item 1503; consolidated text — Dz.U. 2024 item 791. There were no other changes in the Journal of Laws up to 15.10.2026. ↩

11. Act on the professions of physician and dentist, Article 16j(2b) (in Polish) — the commitment to work in Poland and the pay supplement of PLN 700 or PLN 600. ↩

12. Act on the professions of physician and dentist, Article 16j(2g), (2l), (2n), (2s) and (2t) (in Polish) — shortening of the commitment, the penalty of 75% of the supplements received, its reduction, the voivode’s decision and giving up the supplement. ↩

13. Beauty Razem, “Chirurgia plastyczna i dermatologia na czele najbardziej obleganych specjalizacji lekarskich” (“Plastic surgery and dermatology lead the most sought-after medical specialisations”, in Polish), 10.12.2025 — compilation by the director of the CMKP: candidates (first choice in the application) for all places in specialties with more than 10 places; results after the third stage. ↩ ↩² ↩³

14. CMKP, “Liczba miejsc szkoleniowych dla lekarzy i lekarzy dentystów — sesja jesień 2025” (“Number of training places for doctors and dentists — autumn 2025 session”, in Polish), list of 28.08.2025; totals for specialties across the 16 voivodeships — our calculations. ↩ ↩²

15. Termedia, citing the CMKP, “Ostateczne wyniki rekrutacji na specjalizacje w sesji jesiennej 2025” (“Final results of the recruitment for specialisations in the autumn 2025 session”, in Polish), 20.11.2025 — places, applications and doctors accepted after two stages, the ten specialties with the most doctors accepted in each mode. ↩ ↩²

16. Rynek Zdrowia, “Choć kształcimy coraz więcej, w tych dziedzinach nadal będzie brakować lekarzy” (“Although we are training more and more, these specialties will still be short of doctors”, in Polish), 21.07.2025 — a summary of the Ministry of Health’s health needs maps. ↩