Med students meet their Match March 16

Today at exactly  noon EDT (9 a.m. PDT in  Seattle), fourth-year med students across the country opened envelopes and checked smart phone apps to see the fruits of their years of hard work and tenacity. Few events generate as much excitement for the soon-to-be M.D.s as they learned in which residency programs they will train for the next three to seven years. Cheers, hugs and tears were not in short supply.    

The National Residency Matching Program said that  the 2018 Main Residency Match is the largest in its history.  A record-high 37,103 applicants submitted program choices for 33,167 positions, the most ever offered in the Match. The number of available first-year  positions rose to 30,232, an increase of 1,383 over 2017,

See today's news release from the National Residency Matching Program summarizing and analyzing the overall 2018 Match results, and their infographic and preliminary data tables.

At the UW School of Medicine, 217 students are participating in Match across the five-state WWAMI region. WWAMI, founded in 1971, is a regional, decentralized medical education program run by the UW School of Medicine in Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho. The program is a key reason why many UW medical school graduates decide to become primary-care physicians in rural, underserved communities.  

Of the 217 UW participants in the Match this year, 32 percent matched into residencies in WWAMI, and 50 percent matched into primary-care residencies. Results of the Main Residency Match are often used to predict the future makeup of  the physician workforce.

“Every practicing doctor over the age of 40 remembers opening that envelope,” said Dr. Suzanne Allen, vice dean for academic, rural and regional affairs for the UW School of Medicine. “Today students can find out where they matched by checking an app on their smart phone, but regardless of how you find out it is extremely thrilling to learn where you’ll spend the next three to seven years training in your chosen field. We are very proud of and excited for our students.”

Residency training, also called graduate medical education, or GME, prepares those who have recently earned an M.D. degree for particular fields of medical practice.. Before graduates from an M.D. program can practice medicine, they must complete residency training.

For applicants, the Main Residency Match process begins in the fall during the final year of medical school, when they apply to the residency programs of their choice. Throughout the fall and early winter, applicants interview with programs. From mid-January to late February, applicants and program directors rank each other in order of preference. They then submit their preference lists to the National Residency Matching Program, which processes them using a computerized mathematical algorithm to match applicants with programs.

Seattle Match Day 2018 Celebration taped video on Facebook:

facebook.com/UWSOMWWAMI

Follow or discuss the Match on Twitter:

#HuskyMatch   #Match2018

For details about UW Medicine, please visit http://uwmedicine.org/about.