Graduate Medical Education and “The Match”

Abstract

It won’t be that long before you join the over 15,000 medical students who are awarded the M.D. degree each year at one of 125 medical schools. Unfortunately, this does not qualify you to practice medicine; you still have a ways to go. Before you can hang out your shingle or put you name on the door, you have to complete an additional three to seven years of residency training (one to three years just to be licensed in most states). In a manner somewhat akin to the process you went through getting in to college and medical school, you now face choosing where this training will take place and in what field of practice. Since 1952, this process has been simplified somewhat by the institution of a national system designed to match candidates and programs. A similar program is in place for graduates of schools of osteopathic medicine as well. This system also provides for a uniform decision date; further reducing the stress of the process. The system is designed to level the playing field, allowing students to obtain the most desirable position available to them. (Over 80% get their first, second, or third choice.) Almost all graduate medical trainees in the United States go through the matching process to get their residency assignment. There are some individual specialties and special circumstances that have their own version of the matching process, and these will be discussed in Chapter 15.