The Canadian Resident Matching Service matched the vast majority of graduating medical students (94%) with residency training programs in this year's match. Well over half of graduates (59%) got their first choice of both discipline and training program, while 86% matched to their first-choice discipline. Of the 42 Canadian students who went unmatched in the first round, 40 were matched in the second iteration, with 78% matching to their first-choice discipline.
The University of Ottawa, followed by McMaster University and the University of Saskatchewan, had the highest proportion of graduates matching to their first-choice specialty, with all 3 surpassing 90%. Memorial and McGill universities and the University of Toronto had the highest proportion of graduates remaining for postgraduate training, but overall more than half of graduating students (55%) ended up moving to a new faculty of medicine.
Women were more likely to match to their first-choice discipline (85%) than men (78%). This year's match saw a 23% decrease in the number of men choosing internal medicine, although the decline was offset somewhat by a 17% increase in the number of women selecting this discipline.
The trend away from the selection of family medicine as a first-choice discipline (see CMAJ 2001;164[8]:1194) continued, with 91 of the 476 family medicine positions (19%) left unmatched after the first round. Anesthesia was a very popular choice in the 2001 match and was oversubscribed, a marked change from the results just 5 years ago. There was a 40% increase in the number of men ranking anesthesia as their first choice. However, orthopedic surgery, which traditionally has been a popular choice, did not fill all of its positions during the first iteration of the 2001 match.
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Lynda Buske
lynda.buske@cma.ca
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