Fourth-year medical students around the country and those at Meharry Medical College learned where they’ll begin the next phase of their training as resident physicians during the nationwide event known as Match Day. Fifty-one percent of Meharry’s fourth-year students matched in the primary care fields of Internal Medicine, Pediatrics and Family Medicine and Obstetrics and Gynecology.
“We are pleased that our students continue to pursue primary care fields and that many of them seek to train in specialties like orthopedic surgery and neurology,” said Marquetta L. Faulkner, M.D., interim dean, School of Medicine and acting senior vice president for Health Affairs. “Wherever they go, we know our students will deliver culturally sensitive, compassionate, excellent health care.”
Meharry Medical College students successfully ‘matched’ in dozens of residency training programs including Mayo Clinic, Baylor College of Medicine, University of Texas San Antonio, University of Chicago, Washington University, Case Western Reserve, Tulane and Meharry.
More than 40,000 applicants apply for the match to find a position at a U.S. teaching hospital where they will undertake a three to seven-year period of specialized training. Match Day is the culmination of a process where medical school students across the country submit their top three choices for residency programs to the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP), a nonprofit organization established in 1952 to create a fair mechanism to match the preferences of applicants to U.S. residency positions. The Match uses a computerized mathematical algorithm, designed to produce a best result by aligning the preferences of applicants with the preferences of residency programs in order to fill the thousands of training positions available at U.S. teaching hospitals.
Match rates can be an indicator of career interests among U.S. medical school seniors. Primary care physicians are the main source of health care for most Americans, yet there is a concern that there will be a shortage of primary care doctors in the coming years. Meharry’s match rate in primary care is among the highest in the nation. Many Meharry graduates enter the primary care fields, because they are devoted to fulfilling Meharry’s mission of caring for underserved and vulnerable populations.
Meharry’s overall match rate was 84% for the 2015 class of graduating seniors. The National Resident Matching Program conducts Match Day annually to match the preference of applicants with their choice of medical residency programs that offer available training positions at U.S. teaching hospitals. A resident is a medical school graduate who is undertaking a three to seven-year period of specialized training in a medical specialty.
