I opened my email Friday Jan 18, 2019 and found an email from the American Urological Association announcing that date was “match day” for medical students applying for urology residency positions starting July 2019. 

Most of you listening to this podcast may not know what the matching system is for medical training. The Urology match day is a day when all of the medical students applying to become urology residents around the country will find out where they will be spending the next five to six years of their lives as residents. The “match” is a process whereby all of the students applying for training and all of the programs that have open positions to fill are put together or “matched” on a best fit analysis by a computer algorithm.

Does this all sound a little arbitrary to you? Just come up with a rank list and then on a certain day get a letter telling you that is where you are going and you just have to go? Doctors have been trusting or not trusting in the process now for 60 plus years. And it’s not arbitrary. In fact, the scientific work done proving this process works has won a Nobel Prize.