Can someone please explain what Preliminary and Transitional matches mean?

[horton thruggle]

I've been looking at match statistics from various schools and mostly they are pretty straightforward.

I'm stumped, however, at what matching to "transitional," "preliminary" and similar terms mean. Ditto for a person matching to preliminary for one year followed by surgery for the next year.

If you have a decoder ring, please enlighten me.

TIA

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[nonesuchgirl]

It refers to residency positions.

That said, prelim and trans are the same thing. Some residencies require the first year be a prelim or trans and then you go into your "real" residency. (Such as different surgery specialties.)

 

[LizzyM]

Some residencies (some in neurology, psychiatry, & anesthesiology come to mind) require a preliminary year of post graduate training (also called transitional as it transitions one from medical school to residency). In some instances, the year includes training in several different fields (medicine and pediatrics and OB, for example).

 

[horton thruggle]

Some residencies (some in neurology, psychiatry, & anesthesiology come to mind) require a preliminary year of post graduate training (also called transitional as it transitions one from medical school to residency). In some instances, the year includes training in several different fields (medicine and pediatrics and OB, for example).

I think I asked my question inartfully.

I am looking in particular at UIC's 2007 match data. see http://www.uic.edu/depts/mcam/osa/careers/MatchData/2007MatchResultsbySpecialty.htm

In here, the particular specialties you mention (neurology, psychiatry, & anesthesiology) are lsited without prelim or transistional years.

If you look toward the middle of the list, there are 15 or so students who match to "MEDICINE-PRELIMINARY" and another handful at the end of the list matched to "TRANSITIONAL."

What I am really asking is this: are these students who didn't match into any program and had to scramble to obtain interim positions?

Again, TIA

 

[LizzyM]

I think I asked my question inartfully.

I am looking in particular at UIC's 2007 match data. see http://www.uic.edu/depts/mcam/osa/careers/MatchData/2007MatchResultsbySpecialty.htm

In here, the particular specialties you mention (neurology, psychiatry, & anesthesiology) are lsited without prelim or transistional years.

If you look toward the middle of the list, there are 15 or so students who match to "MEDICINE-PRELIMINARY" and another handful at the end of the list matched to "TRANSITIONAL."

What I am really asking is this: are these students who didn't match into any program and had to scramble to obtain interim positions?

I can't speak to those particular grads but if you look at some of the transitional year programs (http://www.harborhospital.org/body.cfm?id=555950 http://www.usd.edu/med/residencies/transitional/current.cfm) you'll find people going on to residencies in derm, radiology and anesthesiology after the transitional year so it hardly seems like the place for those who couldn't get anything else.

 

[Blade28]

If you do a search in the Internship, General Residency or ERAS/Match forums, you'll get a ton of hits on Categorical vs. Preliminary vs. Transitional internships.

 

[Zweihander]

What I am really asking is this: are these students who didn't match into any program and had to scramble to obtain interim positions?

Again, TIA

The answer to your question is there on the list. If you notice, at least some of the people who are listed as "preliminary" matches ALSO are on the list a second time for another field. If you are curious whether everybody listed as a preliminary or a transitional matched, just look through the list to see whether they show up again as having matched into a residency program or not.

 

[Zweihander]

Some residencies (some in neurology, psychiatry, & anesthesiology come to mind) require a preliminary year of post graduate training (also called transitional as it transitions one from medical school to residency). In some instances, the year includes training in several different fields (medicine and pediatrics and OB, for example).

This is not quite right. A preliminary year is generally thought of as an internship in a primary medical field. People can do prelim years in surgery or internal medicine, for instance.

A transitional year is what you describe in your last sentence: basically an internship which entails rotations through multiple specialties and which has more elective time as compared to a standard prelim year. Transitional years are generally considered to be significantly easier than prelim years.

 

[kenmc3]

What people have said above is correct in describing what these years entail. Allow me to add one point… The reason people enter into these years is for the following reasons:

1)They are entering into a specialty like derm, optho, anesthesia, PM&R, neurology which don’t have their own internships built into the program. These students then match not only in those residency programs, they also match into their prelim/transitional year (hence why their name might me mentioned twice on an match list).

2)Some people don’t know what they want to do so they apply to one of these programs to give them an extra year to decide and get the intern year out of the way.

3)Some people applied to derm, optho etc and didn’t match. Then they do one of these programs (since it is the internship year anyway) and reapply the next year for the specialty they want.

 

[ufgrad00]

Thanks for explaining this. I too was confused about the terminology.

 

[Law2Doc]

Thanks for explaining this. I too was confused about the terminology.

FWIW, while there is nothing wrong with learning the terminology, it is way way way way way too early to be worried about prelim and transitional years as a premed. And this is yet another reason why folks probably shouldn't be pretending they can usefully read a match list as a premed. (I was guilty of this myself back when, and probably wasted a ton of time fruitlessly).
As for other reasons why match lists are less than helpful in evaluating med schools, do a search -- there are many such threads. You don't know what programs are good in what specialties, and you don't know what specialties people at a given school are actually interested in getting. The worst competitive specialty program may be substantially worse than the best IM program so you can't even pick out the competitive specialties to get a feel. These match lists are thus more apt to confuse than help and frequently don't tell you what as a premed you may think they are telling you. They should be things you look at late in med school after sitting down with a mentor in your desired specialty who can tell you what programs are good versus malignant. Things will become clearer regarding match lists when you get to the appropriate juncture, but as a premed you probably get more value when evaluating schools looking at class schedules, geography, "vibe" and how nice the hospital/library looks.