National survey of internal medicine residency programs of their 1st-year experience with the Electronic Residency Application Service and National Resident Match Program changes
Lj. Adams et al., National survey of internal medicine residency programs of their 1st-year experience with the Electronic Residency Application Service and National Resident Match Program changes, TEACH L MED, 13(4), 2001, pp. 221-226
Background: The residency recruitment and selection process is a critical o
ne for residency programs and medical students. In 1999, internal medicine
programs conducted the residency match on the Web for the first time using
the Electronic Residency Application Service (ERAS).
Purpose: The authors wished to study the impact of this change on house sta
ff recruitment and quality of match.
Method: A Web-based survey with e-mail, paper and fax reminders was sent to
all 407 internal medicine residency programs after the 1999 match.
Results: Eighty-six percent of reporting programs found the screening of ap
plicants easier The overall number of applicants varied greatly (48% of pro
grams reported more applicants; 32% reported fewer). The quality of final m
atch was rated the same as previous years by 47%, better by 38%, and worse
by 15%.
Conclusions: The transition to ERAS was successful in internal medicine. Ho
wever, there are several areas that were identified that will improve the E
RAS process as it evolves.