Match Day Reveals Residency Choices
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Dressed for the role, including “doc” tattoos, these Feinberg |
This year, 160 Feinberg School students joined more than 15,000 medical students nationwide vying for first-year residency positions in the United States offered through the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP). “I’m going home!” shouted Brendan MacKay of New York City, who will complete an orthopaedic surgery residency at the New York University Medical Center’s Hospital of Joint Diseases.
Obstetrics and gynecology saw the biggest increase at the Feinberg School, leaping from 7 graduates going into this specialty in 2006 to 16 this year. These numbers reflect a trend seen nationally over the past few years, according to NRMP. Internal medicine held steady as the largest specialty area being sought for residencies both at Northwestern and in the nation. Pediatrics and emergency medicine were also popular choices here. The number of family medicine residency positions available in the 2007 Match continued to decline this year with 100 fewer positions available than in 2006 and more than 500 fewer than were available in 2000, said NRMP. Seven Feinberg School students were matched in that speciality and nine in general surgery. General surgery continues to be a very competitive specialty with all but 2 of the 1,057 available positions being filled through the Match.
At home the Northwestern McGaw Center for Graduate Medical Education matched 236 of 241 positions, including 150 of 152 positions at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, 43 of 46 positions at Evanston Northwestern Healthcare, and all positions at Children’s Memorial Hospital (31) and Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago (12).
The program, started in 1952 at the request of medical students to provide a fair and impartial transition from medical school to residency, uses a computer algorithm that aligns the preferences of applicants with those of residency programs to fill the thousands of training positions in U.S. teaching hospitals. Compared with last year’s national figures, nearly 200 more seniors applied for residencies through NRMP than in 2006, reflecting recent increases in medical school enrollment. In addition to more applicants, the number of available residency positions was the highest in history, according to NRMP.
Match Day is part of a week-long process. On Monday, NRMP applicants are told whether they have been matched to a residency program of their choice, although the name of the program is not revealed. In Tuesday’s “scramble” the locations of remaining unfilled residency positions are released to unmatched applicants, who then have the opportunity to contact the programs about the open positions. Thursday was the official Match Day for the nation’s 125 medical schools.