Graduating medical students at the Medical College of Wisconsin learned where they will be serving their post-graduate residency training on “Match Day.” Held on March 20, a nationally administered computerized system gives the results of the matches it has made between medical students and residency training programs across the country.
Of the 188 fourth-year medical students at MCW, 184 students obtained first-year residency positions through the match. The remaining four students obtained first-year positions through the military match.
Fifty-three of MCW’s graduating fourth-year students, or 27 percent, will remain in Wisconsin to serve first-year post-graduate residency training.
Physicians are required to have a minimum of three years of post-graduate training in the specialties they choose. Primary care fields attracted 39 percent of MCW graduates this year. Those fields include internal medicine (17 percent of the class), pediatrics (14 percent), family medicine (7 percent) and medicine/pediatrics (1 percent).
The three top choices of specialty were internal medicine (17 percent), pediatrics (14 percent) and anesthesiology (10 percent). The remaining graduating physicians selected specialties including obstetrics/gynecology, orthopaedic surgery, ophthalmology, radiation oncology, pathology, neurology, general surgery, plastic surgery, urology, physical medicine and rehabilitation, psychiatry, dermatology, otolaryngology, emergency medicine, and radiology.
For students participating in the National Residency Matching Program (NRMP), or “Match,” it is the culmination of a year’s work. During the first half of their senior year, medical students apply for positions at residency programs of their choosing. In February, after they have visited program sites and been interviewed by program directors, the students enter their choices, in order of preference, into a computer. At the same time, residency program directors nationwide enter similar rank order lists for the students they have interviewed.
Lists from each group are sent to the NRMP headquarters in Washington, D.C., where a computer matches students and residency programs. The Match is programmed to give students their highest choice possible. Results are released simultaneously throughout the nation.
