CLEVELAND (March 18, 2004) ? Today meant the start of March Madness for college basketball fans. To medical students across the country, however, today was Match Madness.
Marking one of the last hurdles before commencement, March Day is when graduating M.D. students learn where they?ll be spending the next three to seven years of their lives undergoing the additional training necessary to practice and receive board certification. During the year, students have interviewed at hospitals around the country and have listed their preferences as to where they will receive this additional training. On Match Day, they discover how their choices match up with the hospitals at which they have interviewed.
At the Case School of Medicine, students, with their family members and friends, gathered at the Wolstein Research Building and eagerly counted the minutes until noon, when they would be permitted to access the table where the envelopes containing their fates awaited.
As that time approached, Richard D. Aach, M.D., associate dean and director of residency and career planning, told them, ?You did fantastically well, and we?re very, very proud of you. What?s really evident is that you matched outstanding programs that really were your top choices.?
Aach said about one fourth of the 137 students participating in the match this year will be undertaking residencies at University Hospitals of Cleveland or MetroHealth Medical Center in Cleveland and that, overall, about 40 percent of the class matched to residencies in Ohio and about 25 programs in the same number of states also are represented in the residency programs to be filled by Case medical students.
Ralph I. Horwitz, M.D., medical school dean and university vice president for medical affairs, attending his second consecutive Match Day at Case and his first since leaving Yale to become dean on April 1, 2003, told students, ?In the past year, I have learned that Case medical students are among the best in the country.? Additional proof of that excellence came when the students opened their envelopes to reveal matches to prestigious programs in Cleveland and elsewhere.
Primary care fields remained popular among students around the country, including those in Cleveland. Forty-seven percent of Case students matched in primary care fields. The specialty with the greatest number of matches at Case was internal medicine, with 29 matches (21 percent of the class). Pediatrics was the second most popular specialty among students in Cleveland, with 24 matches (18 percent). Primary care also was represented through six matches to internal medicine/pediatrics residencies and five matches to family medicine programs (four percent each).
As is the case nationally, the specialties of emergency medicine and surgery continued to be increasingly popular among Case students, with nine matches each, and eight students chose ophthalmology residencies.
A run-down of other fields represented in the match at Case, listed alphabetically: anesthesiology, five matches; dermatology, one; neurology, four; obstetrics/gynecology, five; oral and maxillofacial surgery, two; orthopaedic surgery, five; pathology, two; physical medicine and rehabilitation, two; psychiatry, five; radiology - diagnostic, four; radiation oncology, four; transitional, one; and urology, one.
