Roadmap to Residency: - AAMC

Roadmap to Residency: FromApplication to the Match and BeyondIII. Specialty ChoiceThe process of choosing one’s specialty ishighly personal and both a challengingand rewarding effort. To assist medicalstudents and their career advisors in thisprocess, the AAMC sponsors a structuredfour-phase career planningprogram, Careers in Medicine (CiM,www.aamc.org/careersinmedicine).Other resources regarding specialtyselection can be found in theBibliography (Appendix A).CiM Phase 1, Understanding Yourself,involves a self-assessment by the studentof his or her personal interests, skills,goals, and values. Phase 2, ExploringOptions, involves exploration of thevariety of specialties and medical careeroptions. Phase 3, Choosing a Speciality,involves a comparison of what waslearned during self-assessment with theinformation gathered about variousspecialties and medical career optionsunder consideration, leading to adecision about the specialty that will bepursued during residency training. Phase4, Getting into Residency, involves applicationto, and acceptance by, a residencytraining program.The CiM program provides extensiveinformation about specific specialty andresidency selection processes, including aproposed four-year timeline and voluminousdata about a broad range ofspecialties. The CiM Specialty Pages(www.aamc.org/careersinmedicine)contain general information about thenature of the work in each specialty,training requirements, the personalitycharacteristics of physicians practicing inthe specialty, current workforce andcompensation statistics, and links torelevant professional associations andinformation resources.Students enrolled at U.S. allopathic,selected osteopathic, and Canadianmedical schools also have access, througha password-protected CiM Web site, to avariety of assessment and decisionmakingtools to assist them in the careerplanning process, as well as to detailedinformation about all ACGME-accreditedspecialties. Students can receive an accesscode from their school’s CiM liaison, whois usually a staff person in the Office ofStudent Affairs or Academic Affairs.For each specialty, it is helpful todetermine the number of residencyprogram positions available in thedesired specialty and the number ofapplicants for that specialty in order toassess the competitiveness of the applicationprocess for that specialty. TheFREIDA Online® Web site, maintainedby the American Medical Association(www.ama-assn.org/go/freida), providesaggregate information on ACGMEprograms, including the total number ofresidents per specialty, average programsize, and average number of interviewsprovided per program, as well as informationon the number of graduates andtheir career choices.Applicants may also wish to review theAugust 2006 joint AAMC and NRMPreport entitled, “Charting Outcomes inthe Match.” This report provides informationfor each of 17 specialtiesregarding the following five characteristicsof matched and unmatched applicants:USMLE Step 1 score, number ofpublications, participation in researchprojects, length of rank order list, andmembership in Alpha Omega Alphamedical honor society. The report can beaccessed in PDF format on the AAMCand NRMP Web sites at:www.aamc.org/publications andwww.nrmp.org/matchoutcomes.pdf,respectively.5Association of American Medical Colleges, 2005