Match Day is when 4th year med students find out what residency programs they matched to. This is important information, because even when you graduate from medical school and are technically an MD, your training is really only beginning. Without a completed residency, no one in their right mind would hire you as a doctor (you could work as a consultant for a biotech company, but most med students actually want to be doctors). Around January or February, you create your "match list" where you rank various residency programs you want to go to. Each residency program does the same for its medical student applicants. Everyone submits their list, and the day before Match Day, a central computer uses an algorithm to spit out nationwide match results that pair up students and residencies who have ranked each other high on their respective lists. It's a lot like pledging a fraternity or sorority, only obviously waaaaay more respectable.
At UCI, Match Day is such a big deal that everyone in the School of Medicine gets the day off, all the deans come out, they serve breakfast in the courtyard, set out chairs for the family and friends, have balloons everywhere, and put up a podium where the dean calls off a student's name from a randomly ordered list. When the student approaches, he or she hands the dean a dollar. The dollar goes into a pile for the person who gets their name called last, because it's such a stressful event that no one wants to be at the end! Then the student gets his or her envelope, takes the podium, opens the envelope and reads the result to the crowd. It's kind of like the Oscars. Watching the 4th years yesterday, there were a lot of smiles, shrieks, and joyful dances as most people matched to their #1 choices. But one girl opened her envelope, then silently left the stage in tears. Her husband caught her as she ran off, and led her away as she buried her face in her hands. It turned out that she had matched to the best orthopedic residency in the country, but it was not her #1 choice because her husband was already a maxillofacial surgery resident somewhere else.
This sobering scene illuminated the sacrifice that med students make in order to become doctors. They give up their childhoods, their young adulthoods, their comfortable surroundings, networks, friends, all that potential free time, their childbearing years, and sometimes their families and significant others to pursue the doctor dream. Is it worth it? Many primary care physicians say no, they would not repeat their career if they could go back and do it over again. They get paid so little in relation to their sacrifices: the insurmountable educational debt, mounting costs to practice, dwindling Medicare reimbursement rates, minimal patient-care time, and unbelievable malpractice premiums. It's no wonder physicians in America are trending toward high-paid (read: costly) specialists just so they can recoup in their adulthood all the sacrifices they made earlier in their lives. However, that just leaves the rest of the populace with ever-decreasing access to primary care physicians and ever-increasing costs of health care.
Match Day. Luckily it's a joyful occasion for many. But it's also a time to reflect on the 4th years' achievements and sacrifices, wish them much luck in their residencies, and strengthen one's resolve to overhaul America's broken healthcare system.
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