This summer, more than 60 new resident physicians will begin calling Kalamazoo home following a successful Match Day that ended with the medical school’s nine programs filling every available training slot.
The results were part of the 2018 Main Residency Match on Friday, March 16, which was the largest on record, according to the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP).
This year’s Match was made up of 43,909 registered applicants and 33,167 positions, the most ever offered in the Match. Additionally, the number of available first-year (PGY-1) positions rose to 30,232, 1,383 more than last year.
WMed’s new resident physicians will begin their training at the medical school on July 1, 2018. The medical school boasts training programs in Emergency Medicine, Family Medicine, General Surgery, Internal Medicine, Medicine-Pediatrics, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Orthopaedic Surgery, Pediatrics, and Psychiatry, as well as fellowships in Emergency Medical Services, Simulation and Sports Medicine.
The group of 66 new resident physicians includes two students from WMed’s inaugural Class of 2018. The students were part of a class that saw every student match to a residency program in specialties ranging from Emergency Medicine and General Surgery to Internal Medicine and Orthopaedic Surgery.
Students from WMed’s Class of 2018 will graduate from the medical school on Sunday, May 13, 2018, during a ceremony at Miller Auditorium. The event, scheduled for 2 p.m. that day, is open to the public.
Match Day is a time-honored event held at medical schools across the country and it represents a culmination for graduating medical students as the course of their medical careers is determined and they learn where they will spend the next three or more years for residency training. Residents practice the medicine of their choice in a clinical setting under the supervision of fully licensed physicians.
The Main Residency Match process begins in the fall for applicants, usually in the final year of medical school, when they apply to residency programs at which they would like to train. Program directors review applications and conduct candidate interviews in the fall and early winter. From mid-January to late February, applicants submit to NRMP their rank order lists of preferred programs, and program directors rank applicants in order of preference for training. The NRMP uses a computerized mathematical algorithm to match applicants with programs using the preferences expressed on their ranked lists.
About the NRMP: The National Resident Matching Program® (NRMP®) is a private, non-profit organization established in 1952 at the request of medical students to provide an orderly and fair mechanism for matching the preferences of applicants for U.S. residency positions with the preferences of residency program directors. In addition to the annual Main Residency Match®, the NRMP conducts Fellowship Matches for more than 60 subspecialties through its Specialties Matching Service® (SMS®).