An Analysis of The 2022 Match Cohort: Are Our Changes Having An Impact?
Nissim Hazkour BA1; Jose Palacios BS2; Sarah Barnett BA3; Anna Lieberman BS1; Sharif Hosein MS1; Vladlena Lee BS1; Nicholas Bastidas MD3
1 SUNY Downstate College of Medicine, Brooklyn, NY2 Donald & Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell, Hempstead, NY, USA3 Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Northwell Health, Great Neck, NY, USA.
OBJECTIVE: Due to the pandemic, visiting subinternships were canceled for the 2021 match class, and residency interviews were made virtual. Research has shown the effects these changes had on the 2021 match class, with increased internal candidacy matching and increased intra-regional matching. The 2022 match class had the ability to do one away elective, and admissions committees had an extra year to adapt to virtual interviewing. In this study, the authors sought to determine the possible effects these changes produced in the 2022 Integrated Plastic Surgery match cohort.
METHODS: Demographic and bibliometric characteristics were collected for the 194 current Integrated Plastic Surgery matches across all 86 accredited US Integrated Plastics programs using publicly available websites. Medical school characteristics were collected for all current residents.The association of sex, presence of a home Plastic Surgery department, degree status and AOA status with the average rank of matched graduates’ programs was analyzed. Association between medical school region and Integrated program region was also analyzed.
RESULTS: This year’s match included 100 (51.5%) Females and 94 Males (48.5%); 26 matches (13%) had an additional masters degree, and 6 had an additional PhD (3%). 92/194 matches went to students from schools within the program’s same region (47.4%). However, the 2022 rate is only marginally significantly different to the 2021 rate of 56.2% with a P value of 0.07. The 2022 rate is not significantly different from the 44% regional rate seen between 2016-2020. 29 students matched at their medical school's home integrated program in 2022 (14.9%). This is significantly decreased compared to the 48 students who matched their school’s home program (25.9%) in 2021, with a P value of 0.009. The 2022 internal match rate is statistically similar to that of the pre-pandemic match cycles (2016-2020), which averaged a 16.6% internal candidate match rate. Subgroup analysis shows no significant differences between the average Doximity rank of male and female matches’ programs. There was also no difference when stratifying by AOA status and additional degrees.
CONCLUSIONS: This highlights the decrease in internal candidacy matching in the 2022 match class compared to the 2021 class; however, increased rates of intra-regional matching still lingers. Further research on the incoming 2023 match class should elucidate the effects of having the ability to complete multiple visiting clerkships. Lastly, equality amongst the sexes is increasing in the Integrated plastic surgery match.
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