Resident-Matching Programs

Abstract

In recent years, medical students and educators have been interested in obtaining, within a specialty, a uniform appointment date for first-year residents. The purpose is to allow the student of medicine time enough to select wisely his field of graduate medical education and seek intelligently what would be for him the "best" graduate program. In seeking mechanisms for implementing this uniform appointment date, most of the specialty groups have discussed the advantages and disadvantages of resident matching; only two have actually tested the idea. Resident matching as discussed in this paper refers only to the appointment of<i>first-year</i>residents. The Student American Medical Association, after having examined the various mechanisms which might be employed to implement uniform appointment dates, voted at their 1968 House of Delegates meeting to seek the implementation of additional resident-matching programs. The decision was prompted by the dual realization that the applicants are the primary beneficiaries