National Resident Matching Program

Now, the AOA has considered that, and they work with SOMA, Student Outstanding Medical Association, and they chose not to sign off on that initially, but they're working very closely with ACOM on this issue because AOA believes that working with ACOM, and they are in developing a summit and meeting together with leaders from the House of Medicine, trying to negotiate a solution to this problem of bias without having to go through legislation.

And so while the AOA has yet to sign off on that, we're still working very closely with our leadership from ACOM and others from the ACGME, from NRMP and AAMC to try to make changes so that our students don't have to go through this anymore.

We're, I think, in our third year of having this go forward.

And I think one of the nice benefits of having this legislation there was co-sponsors.

And then from the hand perspective, and maybe we're going to hit that later, but hand fellowship applicants come from both orthopedic surgery and plastic surgery.

And we're through the NRMP.

So as Dr. Hamilton mentioned, not through SFMATCH.

But there's been a lot of discussion about signaling, especially based on what the other orthopedic programs did this past year.

I know we're going to get to, like, what the next years looked like for you and what you did next and everything, but I just think that there is something so crushing about, like, that day and that email, and it makes us start to tell ourselves stories about ourselves that are just not true.

It's helpful to have these other data points because if you're saying to yourself, "Well, I don't know anyone really cool and smart and top of their class who had this happen to them," so then you start side-eyeing and then you say, "I guess there must really be something wrong with me." We're not gonna go really deep into what's wrong with the Match process today, although the NRMP is a monopoly, so there are some things wrong with it.

But it just is like we don't have to, we don't have to make it mean something that it doesn't mean.

I don't know if that resonates with you at all.

You're gonna maximize your, your chances.

And like when you apply, you have to apply to match, fun fact, so you apply for like the NRMP match.

There's a separate application for that.

You have to put in...

[laughs]

If only, if only so that the, uh, you know, the, the, I don't know, 10, 15 program directors that you, uh, that you interview with have heard of the Short Code Podcast.

You just wait till the NRMP starts tracking podcasts.

Podcast episodes.

All right, well, we'll switch gears a little bit, and maybe you'll like this question too, because it's data-driven, educational.

So based on the most recent NRMP match data, the PMR match rate by preferred specialty was 82.4%, which is a drop from around 85% two years ago, and historical data, but I think it was closer to around 90% 10 years ago.

So what do you think are the driving factors that are causing this continual drop in match rate over the years? Is it that applicants are more competitive? Are there too many applicants and out of spots? What does it look like?

I think there's several factors that are driving the rate, the PM&R match rate down.