The Match

As the end of the year draws near, one of the last major events that still remains for all 4th year medical students is the dreaded "Match." For many, this is the culmination of all the hard work that has been put into medical school and justifies those long days and nights studying for exams. However, for others this can be a time of tremendous stress and anxiety, as the possibility of not matching into a program, or a favorite program, becomes a reality. Unfortunately, this anxiety is becoming more of a reality for medical students across the country as a result of the changes in our health care legislation. To make a long story short, in an attempt to address the country's doctor shortage the government has increased funding of medical schools in order to produce more medical school graduates. However, legislation has also cut medicare and medicaid funding, which just so happens to fund residency programs that train medical school graduates. The ultimate result is that this country is churning out an increasing surplus of medical graduates for a plateaued number of residency positions. Below is a graph which depicts this trend before the last two years, and unfortunately the discrepancy has only gotten worse.

Before getting into the specifics of the Match, I feel like I should talk about the journey to get to this point...

Matching into a residency program starts long before the 4th year of medical school. In my specific case, I knew even before entering into medical school that I wanted to work in the field of pediatrics in some manner, however, many people enter into these last 4 years with no idea as to their field of choice. As a result, my journey was much easier than many of my classmates because I already knew where my future career was headed. Working with children has always been one of the greatest joys in my life, and in the field of medicine it was no different. When I tell people about my decision to enter into pediatrics many state the following: "I don't know how you could want to work with sick kids all day." My response to them is simply, "How could you not!" In pediatrics, it's true that the low points are extremely low, but the highs are just as amazing, if not better. Plus, kids are awesome ... That's a scientific fact! What other field of medicine allows the physician to tackle such complex medical diagnoses, followed by receiving a drawing from your patient or getting to discuss the latest Pixar movie in all its splendor. In subsequent posts I hope to share some of the wonderful stories I have gained from the last 4 years, but I'll get back to the topic of this post ...

A drawing one of my very sick renal (kidney) patients drew for me in clinic ... I was the green blob at the top of the drawing, right next to the blue blob with "barfed" written inside

Once my decision to go into pediatrics was made and I had completed my require USMLE Board exams (3x), then began the incredibly monotonous application process. I ended up applying to 30 programs in total, and got interview invitations to approximately 25, of which I only accepted 9. Nine interviews may not seem like much, but when those interview were compressed into a 6 week period after the birth of our son, it was beyond tiring. After about 20 flights, and 2 nights spent in the airport due to flight cancellations, car rentals, cabs, and hotels, I was ready to be done. After interviews, I had to sit down and rank each program compared to one another. Fortunately and unfortunately for me, I really like each place I interviewed, and could see myself being trained well at any of the programs, which made the decision process more difficult. On 2/26/2014 I submitted my rank list to the NRMP Match server and all the programs also submitted their rank lists of candidates ... Now we wait. On March 21st (Match day) every graduating medical student receives an envelop containing the name of the program where they will be training for the next few years in the specialty of their choice. To say the least, I'm nervous, anxious and excited at the same time as I wait to hear where my family and I will be placed. I rest in the fact that neither myself, the programs, nor the NRMP servers dictate where I will be heading for residency ... Rather its Gods sovereign will that determines the path for my future, and wherever I'm placed will be exactly where I'm supposed to be.