Canada's 2002 medical graduates appear to be at the feast end of a feast-or- famine cycle, with the number of residency slots available far outstripping the number of Canadian-trained students available to fill them. This is good news not only for these students but also for Canadian and other graduates of international medical schools seeking postgraduate training here. The first round of the 2002 match ended Mar. 13 with an all-time high of 188 positions — 15% of the total — unfilled.
Sandra Banner, executive director of Canadian Resident Matching Service, said 90% of graduating students — a record — were matched to their first choice of discipline in 2002, up from the previous high of 88%. “We simply have more positions than students — 1260 positions and 1117 students,” she said. All 188 unclaimed positions are expected to be filled during the match's second iteration, mainly by Canadian and other graduates of foreign medical schools.
A record number of family medicine positions — 109 — went unfilled in the first round, up from 91 last year (see CMAJ 2001;164[8]:1194).
At the other end of the spectrum were surgical residencies, which attracted “across-the-board” interest. Only 4 positions — 2 in general surgery and 2 in neurosurgery — remained unfilled after the first round.
The unfilled positions are also a boon for Canadian graduates who studied abroad. However, not all of them are coming home. Ilana Porzecanski, a Canadian who studied in Ireland and was featured in a recent CMAJ article (2000;162:869), is pursuing her training in internal medicine in St. Louis. She did not apply to the CaRMS match — Patrick Sullivan, CMAJ