from
https://www.do-online.org/index.cfm?PageID=sir_matchprotocol
The AOA accredits three kinds of internships:
Traditional Rotating: Institutions have flexibility in designing the composition of a traditional rotating internship. When interviewing for positions, students should discuss and negotiate directly with the institution about the specialty curricula included in a rotating internship.
Special Emphasis: The focus of the internship is within a particular specialty, but the internship DOES NOT reduce the total number of years of postdoctoral training required for specialty training. Special emphasis internships can be offered in anesthesiology, emergency medicine, family medicine, general surgery, psychiatry and diagnostic radiology.
Specialty Track: The internship may reduce the total number of years of postdoctoral training. Specialty track internships can be offered in internal medicine, internal medicine/pediatrics, obstetrics/gynecology, otolaryngology/facial plastic surgery, pediatrics, and urological surgery. Such programs can only be offered by institutions with existing AOA-approved osteopathic residencies in these specialties.
In addition to specialty training within an internship, many positions are offered in the Match as combined internship/residency programs, as described in the next section. These programs link the internship program directly with a residency program for subsequent training in a particular specialty.
During discussions with students, institutions should indicate the various options for specialty training and program types offered by the institution, and indicate how they expect applicants to designate preferences for each of the specialty curricula on their Rank Order Lists. As discussed above, for a match between a student and an institution to occur, both must indicate the same internship program on their Lists. It is the responsibility of the institution and the students to ensure the correct Code Number for each program is used when submitting Rank Order Lists. In previous years, a few expected matches did not occur because the student ranked a particular program in the institution while the institution ranked the student on a Rank Order List for a different program.
Program Types Offered in the Match
All programs offered in the Match are internship programs with positions beginning in 2007. However, the programs offered in the Match can be classified into two types:
Internship-only programs: These programs involve a one-year commitment between the applicant and the institution for an OGME-1 internship position only, commencing in July 2007. For example, traditional rotating or special emphasis internship positions that are not linked to residency positions would be offered to applicants as an internship-only program in the Match.
Combined internship/residency programs: These programs combine both an OGME-1 internship position commencing in July 2007 followed by an OGME-2 residency position in a particular specialty commencing in July 2008. Any type of internship program (traditional rotating, special emphasis, specialty track) may be linked with a residency program to form a combined internship/residency program.
Applicants who match to a combined internship/residency program will start training in the internship program in 2007; however, assuming acceptable performance during the internship year, both the applicant and the residency program are also committed to each other for OGME-2 training beginning in 2008.
For a combined internship/residency program, the OGME-1 internship and the OGME-2 residency will be offered together, as a single program in the Match. While in most cases the internship and residency programs will be in the same institution, this will not necessarily always be the case. A combined internship/residency program could consist of an internship at one institution, followed by a residency at a different institution. However, the link between the internship and residency will be established prior to listing the program for the Match. Each combined internship/residency program will be represented by a single, unique Code Number in the Match, and will be ranked by the students as a single program in the Match.