Tag Archives: Residency

Top 10 Pieces of Advice for New Behavioral Science Educators

Posted on September 29, 2014 by | 3 comments
Jennifer Ayres, PhD

Jennifer Ayres, PhD

I graduated 14 years ago with a plan. I envisioned a lifelong career devoted to the clinical care of underserved children, adolescents, and their family members. Pursuing a career in graduate medical education was not part of the plan. But a need to move closer to family and an interesting job description caught my attention and changed my career course.

During my phone interview, I was honest about my lack of experience in resident education. I believed my clinical skills and experience teaching mental health graduate students would generalize to family medicine residents. And they did…after a steep learning curve.

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Posted in Faculty Development, Family Medicine Stories

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Too Much of Anything Is Bad: Advising Students on the Number of Programs to Apply to

Posted on June 9, 2014 by | 3 comments

By David Anthony, MD, MSc, Alec Chessman, MD, Kristina Duarte, MD, ScM, Katie Margo, MD, of Medicine Jacob Prunuske, MD, MSPH, and Martha Seagrave, PA-C.

This is in response to a previous blog post, How Faculty Can Prepare Students for the Match.

In an effort to address the increasing challenge of assisting students in obtaining family medicine positions in the Match, Michelfelder et al recently published a set of recommendations derived from discussions at sessions presented at the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM) Conference on Medical Student Education (MSE) and the Association of Departments of Family Medicine Conference. We commend the authors on their important work, and we support many of their recommendations, including:

  • Encouraging increased communication between medical school advisors and program directors
  • Discouraging students who do not “see themselves as thriving as family physicians” from applying to family medicine programs

However, we take issue with one of their recommendations, and pose an alternate viewpoint.

The authors state that “Most clerkship directors recommend students apply to 20–40 programs to increase interview offers.” While this statement may represent the prevailing voiced opinion during the lecture discussion at MSE, we take issue with the claim that most clerkship directors recommend students apply to 20–40 programs, and we vigorously disagree with the recommendation. Broadly encouraging students to apply to such a large number of programs will worsen the challenges of students in obtaining interviews and residency positions.

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Posted in Education, Match, Medical School

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How Faculty Can Prepare Students for the Match

Posted on April 3, 2014 by | 3 comments

By Aaron Michelfelder, MD; Joel Heidelbaugh, MD; Cristen Page, MD, MPH, and Eva Bading, MD

Read the response to this blog post, Too Much of Anything Is Bad: Advising Students on the Number of Programs to Apply to.

As matching into all specialties has become more challenging in the last few years for US medical students, it is important to provide the most timely and accurate advice to those considering family medicine.

Several confounding factors contribute to a more challenging match into family medicine as a primary specialty choice:

  • Medical school class size has increased, and new schools have been formed without any increase in residency positions.
  • There is an increase in US citizens who are international medical students and who are entering the residency Match pool.
  • Medical specialties are becoming more competitive, and students at risk of not matching into their primary specialty choice are creating parallel plans.
  • Fourth-year medical students apply to two or three different specialties, which results in more students applying to family medicine, many of whom are highly competitive and have high USMLE scores.
  • Students who in the past would have been offered many interviews are being offered fewer due to the influx of parallel plan students flooding the family medicine applicant pool.
  • Programs are placing a higher emphasis on USMLE scores as a method of predicting the possibility of passing the ABFM board exam.
  • National Residency Matching Program All In Policy means that more residency slots are filled during the Match, and fewer are available for the Supplemental Offer and Acceptance Program, or SOAP (formerly called “the scramble”).

We recently hosted lecture-discussions on matching into family medicine at the 2014 Society of Teachers of Family Medicine Conference on Medical Student Education and the 2014 Association of Departments of Family Medicine Conference and have collated the thoughts and recommendations of these national discussion participants with advice to students wishing to match into family medicine as listed below.

1) Students should pass and perform well on USMLE Step 1 on the first attempt. It is better to delay clinical clerkships and graduation than to fail Step 1. Some residency programs use the average Step 1 score (around 220) as a cutoff for interview invitations.

2) Students should work hard and perform well on clinical clerkships. International medical students understand that performance on clerkships can help with getting a residency spot, so US medical students can sometimes be overshadowed by very capable and hard-working international medical students. US medical students are competing more than ever against many talented and competitive US and international medical graduates.

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Posted in Education, Match, Medical School, Residency

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