OT: Happy Match Day

Submitted by mgoblueben on
Today is national match day for graduating physicians, finding out where we are going for the next 3-5 years. I will be returning to Michigan (Beaumont) after 4 years in Ohio. Can't wait to buy season football and bball tickets! Fellow wolverine docs share where you're going!

bluebyyou

March 16th, 2018 at 1:05 PM ^

A very special day indeed for those going through the match.  Good luck to all you med students...hope you get your first choice.  It is a celebration of many years of hard work.

As the very proud father of two Michigan alums doing their residencies at Michigan, the importance of this day to fourth year med students and their families cannot be overstated.

MGoStretch

March 16th, 2018 at 1:11 PM ^

Congrats on matching and escaping ohio.  Both are worth celebrating.  There's nothing like opening an envelope telling you where to go and what your life will be like for the next 3-6 years and there's also nothing like living in a land where people poop in coolers.

StephenRKass

March 16th, 2018 at 1:13 PM ^

Happy match day. I was delighted to find that a med student at my church got her first preference, and will stay in the Chicago area. Her husband doesn't have to leave his job, and she will actually cut her commute from her apt to med school down in half. I know what a stressful time this is.

I heard that there are a certain number of med students who don't get "matched." It sounds like there are more students looking for spots than available residencies? Could someone explain?

MGoStretch

March 16th, 2018 at 1:23 PM ^

That depends on the field they're pursuing.  The number of residency slots is controlled by the federal govn and there are some fields that are very competitive (lucrative, intresting, good lifestyle) and have many more applicants than there are slots available.  Like derm, orthopedics, radiology, neurosurgery.  Conversely, there are other specialities where there are many unfilled slots that often get filled with international grads (or not at all).  It also depends on the applicant themselves.  Sometimes folks will try for a relatively non-competitive field but only rank hyper competitive places.  In that case, they also risk not matching.  You actually get an email 2 days before the official match day to let you know whether or not you landed a spot (but not where).  If you don't match, then you have to "scramble".  All of the spots across the country that don't get filled are listed and up for grabs and you spend a miserable day calling and desperately trying to get one of those spots (hence the name).

Don't even get me started on what it's like to try and match with a significant other...

BigBall'n

March 16th, 2018 at 1:27 PM ^

I'm not sure its the federal government.  They subsidize some of the training cost along with state governments.  Really its the American Medical Assocaition (AMA) along with the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) that allocates residency/fellowship programs.

https://www.ama-assn.org/life-career/residencies-fellowships

http://www.acgme.org/

bluebyyou

March 16th, 2018 at 2:10 PM ^

The majority of funding of residency slots is paid for by the US Government through some aspect of Medicare.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/darryl-s-weiman-md-jd/who-pays-for-resid…

If my memory serves me right, the ACA cut back some of the funding for residencies.  I know there were bills in congress to increase funding for residents but I don't know if they ever passed.  Per the AAMC (Associate of American Medical Colleges) there is a significant shortage of physicians forecast over the next decade and there have been efforts afoot to increase the number of doctors the US produces, but the process is slow to implement. 

MGoStretch

March 16th, 2018 at 2:25 PM ^

True, true, and true.  Medical schools have expanded and started popping up all over the place to try and cover that shortage (back when I was just a young lad, there were three in Michigan and one DO school. Now, it seems like everybody has a med school), but until the residency slots start to catch up, there's going to be a bit of bottleneck when it comes to fixing the pending shortage.

MGoStretch

March 16th, 2018 at 2:40 PM ^

That's a good reference provided by bluebyyou. If you want the cliff notes (of the cliff notes), it's generally primary care programs that go unfilled or require a higher percentage of international graduates to fill.  So internal medicine and pediatrics are big ones, but those are broad strokes.  While pretty much any US grad with even basic competency can get an internal med slot somewhere, it may be somewhere geographically/professionally undesirable.  It's not like someone at the bottom of their class can join the Osler service at Hopkins (interesting side note, those interns at Hopkins are made to wear short white coats like medical students until they've finished intern year. Pretty much everyone else in the country gets long coats after finishing medical school). Psych is similarly less competitive.  Pathology isn't super competitive either.