As the Match nears closer and closer, I find myself frequently seeing posts from nervous medical students on social media. My mentees reach out to check in and debrief. Mentees from third year classes ask me what they should be doing to be the best Match candidates possible. The stress of the Match can only be described by those who have done it. The consequences of not matching can be scary. The stress of years of schooling and the prospect of not being able to put your training to much use when doctors are needed throughout the country is overwhelming.
Osteopathic medical students suffer additional stress. It takes extensive research for future DOs to answer the question, “Should I even apply here?” Residency applications are expensive. Interviews laborious and sometimes intense, especially as they are dragged out for months. And all that work just to find out that osteopathically trained physicians are not considered at all or are considered but held to a higher standard than their MD counterparts.
In addition to figuring out the Match process, many students feel they have to take both allopathic and osteopathic licensing exams. I certainly did. I was terrified that, without the MD exam, programs that I was interested in wouldn’t consider me. For students like me, that means an additional exam fee. In my case, it also meant an additional hotel stay and travel cost to the exam. Additional stress. Additional time away from other educational experiences.
Match rates have never been higher for osteopathic students, but these matches do not mean that students were considered for all positions they applied to, or that they ended up in their desired specialty or location. It also doesn’t account for how many programs students took off their lists because the programs didn’t accept osteopathic applicants.
The Match process is incredibly complicated, but it’s not fair to our osteopathic students to continue asking them to divert hours from studying to try to guess which programs they should apply to. It’s not fair to expect them to take the allopathic licensing exams in addition to their required osteopathic licensing exams. And it’s not fair to them, or to the patients who need doctors most, that they’re not able to apply to residency programs where they can help make a big difference. The FAIR Act is a great way to make change fast and make this process more equitable for all.