For those that don't know, Match Day is a yearly event in March in which graduating medical students find out where they will be spending the next few (or several) years of their life as a resident physician. The process leading up to Match day is a long and seemingly arbitrary one, which most people aren't exposed to and don't understand. Hell, even my grasp of the concept is tenuous, and I just went through it!
The first part of the residency application process is similar to the process of applying for college or medical school itself. The summer before your last year of medical school, you research and apply to residency programs in your chosen field around the country (or, if you're like me, keep things local and choose more than one field to apply to) via a centralized application service called ERAS. Then, also like other application processes, the programs choose a certain number of applicants to interview.
Then things diverge. Rather than simply choosing the program you want to attend, or waiting for the programs make offers to you (after all, this is a job, not really "school"), you enter the Match process. In short, you make a list of programs at which you were interviewed in the order in which you want to attend them, called the Rank Order List. Similarly, programs rank their interviewees in order as well. The highest "match" (hence the term) is where you go. Period. No competing offers. No declining acceptance. No changing your mind.
And people wonder why most physicians are crazy.
On "Match Day" everyone traditionally attends a ceremony in which they make small talk, hear a bunch of speeches about how great medicine is, and eventually open an envelope that reveals the program they matched to. As I am the Stay At Home Doctor, I will not be attending this ceremony, and will instead wait the extra hour at home and find out online. I took the slow route through medical school (I'll explain later) and graduated in December rather than May, so I'm matching one year later than my classmates and don't know most people going through the match this year.
Needless to say, Match Day is coming up soon. In fact, it's on Thursday, St. Patrick's Day.
And I'm Irish.
Please let these be good signs . . . (there is more than a hint of desperation here).
Okay, that's all from me for now, lest I spiral into a hypertensive crisis and panic attack just thinking about Match Day.
Signed,
Majin, MD
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