Current trends in Residency matching?

[Briske]

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Hey folks, quick question/observation I had when looking through the last couple of years' match day results for my state med school. I actually went through and tallied up where each person matched to get an idea of where med students are going.

What I found was interesting. Internal Medicine was predictably steady, but Derm, Ophthalmology, and Anesthesiology each doubled or tripled the numbers of students who matched.

Family medicine was pretty steady, and Pediatrics more than doubled from one year to the next.

Please note: these are just simple observations from one medical school. And I used only two years worth of data. But it did get me wondering: what are the current trends in residency matching?

I spoke to someone about to go through match day and they said that Family medicine and Obstetrics/Gynecology were somewhat more competitive this year than they have been in the past. Are we seeing a reaction to the new health care bill take effect already?

Just wanting to know what others thought.

 

[Jolie South]

How would the healthcare bill have anything to do with this?

Medical schools were upping their seats several years before the bill was even an idea.

 

[235009]

I used only two years worth of data.

FAIL

maybe u should lead with this so we know that this thread is useless and wouldn't waste our time reading it

 

[alwaysaangel]

At my school EM, peds and OB are the biggest this year. It varies by year though.

 

[2012mdc]

The most popular last year were Peds, IM, and EM.

Considerable bump in Optho this year. Haven't talked to enough MS4's to know about the regular match yet.

My class has stronger than usual interests in Rads, GAS, Ortho but it's still relatively early

 

[MossPoh]

Matches tend to be class dependent. Some schools have more primary care oriented lists because they actively seek out and accept kids with higher odds of going into primary care, but outside of that it is a crap shoot. My school will go from having 1 radiology, 0 orthopedics, 0 derm, and 15 family med, 20 internal medicine, 12 obgyn type years to the next year the top specialty being general surgery and having EM near the top with like 6 radiology matches. It just goes all over the friggin place.

I can tell my class will probably have a higher primary care match and the year ahead of me will probably be more specialty oriented.

 

[sunset823]

my school is small, public, and is supposed to be primary care oriented, but it tends to match a lot of people to specialties. We have a strong radiology program, so about 10% of the class matches to radiology every year. The top specialties by year have been

2008: 1) Emergency Medicine and 2) tie between IM, Gen Surg, OBGYN, and Radiology

2009: 1) IM and 2) tie between Gen Surg, Anesthesiology, and Radiology

2010: 1) Peds and 2) tie between IM and Radiology

2011: From what I've heard from the M4s, EM is going to top the list again, with gen surg near the top, so it might look like 2008.

so it's become slightly more primary care oriented, but I'd say overall it's still 35/65 primary care/specialists. There are certain specialties that are very rare to match in (I've not seen a neurosurg or plastics match on the lists for years, but that might change with our class, where a few people have expressed interest in neurosurg), but last year someone matched RadOnc, so you never know. And psych, neuro, and path are just generally very unpopular.

It's really all in the makeup of the class and the individual. I have a feeling more than the average number in our class will go the surgery route, and maybe less rads. Or the gung ho wanna be surgeons will have a change of heart and defect to rads, who knows. lol.

 

[Miss Dee Dee]

what are the current trends in residency matching?

OP: here, perhaps?

 

[km11]

Looks like someone's med school doesnt offer a course in statistics

 

[deuist]

The NRMP's website has loads of information regarding national trends in resident matching. You're welcome to spend a few hours there to learn all about matching stats, program directors' preferences, and competitiveness of successful applicants. I will say that the three most popular specialties in the nation in 2010 were internal medicine, pediatrics, and emergency medicine, in that order.