I know there’s a lot going on, but for those of you who didn’t match and didn’t find a spot in SOAP know that this isn’t the end of anything. There’s still plenty of fight to be had, and open spots will come and go as the months go on. I know between our two programs, we filled one in SOAP and then filled at least two vacancies in upper level classes.
Put succinctly, my advice to you is to build a packet, be flexible, comb the internet, send some emails/make phone calls, and leverage any connections you might have even just to hear about openings.
Of course I’m not here to shit on anyone’s good news, I have lots of students who matched and I’m super pumped for them. My purpose here is to make sure those who went unmatched aren’t left behind.
[medical education history lesson below]
It’s a bullshit process, and we’re stuck here because of two Congressmen and some AAMC lobbyists from 2004. The AAMC was facing an antitrust lawsuit in Jung v. Association of American Medical Colleges. The suit was brought as a class-action representing current and former medical students. The allegations were as follows:
M4s were obligated to participate in the match, and thus had no opportunity to negotiate the terms of their contracts
Defendants artificially stunted the number of residency positions, and created numerous obstacles to transferring positions
Defendants required participation in the match to receive ACGME accreditation
Defendants colluded to share conditions of employment, so as to keep salaries, benefits, and workplace conditions low.
No matter how much we like our individual programs, on a national level we know these things to be correct. People are afraid to talk about it, but we all know someone who was forced out of a program and not given a chance to go elsewhere. Blackballing is a real thing in medicine, particularly at this level of training. It was true in 2004, and it’s certainly true now.
Anyway, the suit was actually gaining traction moving through the courts, but Senators Ed Kennedy and Judd Gregg stuck a rider onto an unrelated pension reform bill. That rider retroactively prohibited allegations against the match process to support antitrust claims. The rider and the case were never once debated on the floor, but the bill as a whole passed and was signed into law.
Because it was retroactive, the suit was dismissed. And the osteopathic match was effectively absorbed into the allopathic match by coercion... they were told to merge or else those residents would be excluded from fellowships.
I often hear people ask how physicians got into this position... I can tell you exactly why. It’s because the societies that claim to represent our best interests sold us out repeatedly.
