Our Little Family

We took a recent trip to Sedona, AZ for New Year's and had a wonderful time. After the trip, we continued up to Utah to interview at the Family Medicine program in Provo. This was a picture taken by Audrey's sister during a family hike at a state park in Sedona.

Match results

Well, the osteopathic residency match happened on 2/11.  They were not the results that I was hoping to see.  I did not get an orthopedic surgery match.  I still have 1 orthopedic program ranked in the allopathic match scheduled for 3/20.  However, I feel that one to be a long shot.  I also have a family medicine program ranked in the allopathic match.  It is in Provo, UT.  When I interviewed there, I was very impressed with it.  In many ways, I prefer it to the orthopedic surgery position I am also ranking.

 

Let me briefly explain the match and ranking.  Medical students need to do a residency.  Hospitals need residents.  Students apply to residencies in fields of interest.  The hospitals interview candidates that they feel are qualified and are potential residents.  The students determine which programs are preferable and rank them 1, 2, 3, etc.  Those rankings go into a computer.  The hospitals then rank their preferred applicants 1, 2, 3, etc.  A mouse is enticed with a big piece of cheese and it runs in a big wheel.  That wheel powers a giant computer that tries to match students with programs based on their rankings.  It weights the students preference over the hospitals assuming that the hospital finds the particular student acceptable.  It is a complicated and expensive process, but a necessary evil.

 

Unfortunately, in the competitive fields i.e. orthopedic surgery, there are many more applicants than there are spots.  The 2 places that I was most interested in had 3 and 2 spots respectively.  The first ranked me 8^th and the second ranked me 3^rd.  both had over 150 applicants and interviewed 12.  Either ranking could have been fine if enough individuals ranked above me had preferred other programs.  But that was apparently not the case.

 

As it stands, I am still waiting to find out what field of medicine I will be practicing and where I will be training.  We should know everything on 3/20.  We hate waiting!

 

As a side note, our house will be going up for sale tomorrow.  We hope that we can get it sold in this market.  We are pricing it aggressively, so we are optimistic.  We’ll see how far optimism gets us.