FACTORS USED BY PHYSICAL MEDICINE AND REHABILITATION RESIDENCY TRAINING DIRECTORS TO SELECT THEIR RESIDENTS

A 17-item questionnaire was designed to assess the relative importance of various factors to physical medicine and rehabilitation (PM&R) tra ining directors when ranking PM&R resident applicants during the Natio nal Resident Match. The questionnaire was sent to all PM&R residency t raining directors. The recipients were asked to grade most selection f actors based on a numerical scale: 1, unimportant; 2, some importance; 3, important; 4, very important; 5, critical. The specific factors ad dressed in the questionnaire were: academic criteria, letters of recom mendation, individual applicant characteristics and aspects of the int erview process. Twelve yes-or-no questions were also designed to deter mine the weight that residency training directors place on certain aca demic criteria. A response rate of 88% (66/75) was obtained. The most important academic criteria were grades in a PM&R clerkship in their f acility (4.1 +/- 0.8), followed by grades in a PM&R clerkship in anoth er facility (3.6 +/- 0.9). The most important letters of recommendatio n were from a PM&R faculty member in the respondent's department (4.0 +/- 0.8), followed by the dean's letter (3.7 +/- 1.0) and the PM&R cha irman's letter (3.7 +/- 1.0). The three most important applicant chara cteristics evaluated during the interview were compatibility with the program (4.4 +/- 0.8), the ability to articulate thoughts (4.2 +/- 0.8 ) and the ability to work with the team (4.2 +/- 0.8). Most program di rectors used multiple criteria to complete their rank list, but the mo st important were based upon the interview (4.5 +/- 0.9), letters of r ecommendation (3.7 +/- 0.9), medical school transcript (3.6 +/- 0.8) a nd the dean's letter (3.6 +/- 1.1). Knowledge of the specialty, person al statements and research interest were the least important candidate criteria. The majority of respondents believed that clinical and prec linical honor grades were more important than honor status on the Unit ed States Medical Licensing Examination steps 1 and 2.