Perceived happiness of existing residents and faculty, job placement of recent grads and interaction with current trainees are among the most important factors to radiology residency applicants when ranking their program choices for the NRMP, according to a report published this week in Academic Radiology.
“Every year, medical students devote significant time and energy organizing their radiology residency rank lists for the National Resident Matching Program,” lead author Lyndon Luk, MD, and co-authors wrote in the journal. “Although the overall candidate interview and matching process has remained essentially unchanged since a 2002 study of rank list factors by Pretorius and Hrung, the interval emergence of online educational resources, digital devices and web-based information may influence how candidates receive information about various residency programs and how they choose to rank them.”
Luk, who works with Columbia University’s radiology department in New York, wrote that while residency program directors typically measure their applicants against objective criteria like test scores and class rankings, applicants themselves usually build their lists based on subjective factors.
In an effort to understand those factors—especially after the 2013 introduction of the interventional radiology integrated pathway, which will likely attract an entirely different pool of applicants than those applying for diagnostic radiology programs—Luk et al. distributed a 19-question online survey to 622 applicants to Columbia’s diagnostic or interventional radiology integrated pathways. Applicants were asked to rank 35 elements that might influence their rankings, and were queried about where they found the most pertinent program information.
According to their research, the authors said, survey findings overlapped with previous studies that have found most of the top-rated factors are subjective in nature.
“Perceived happiness of the residents and faculty is the single-most important overall factor,” they wrote. “Resident happiness was also the top factor in previous studies by Lewis and Pretorius, and in similar studies in other specialties from over the past two decades.”
Following closely behind happiness as top-rated factors were fellowship and job placement of recent graduates, interactions with the program’s current residents, stability of the department and geographic location of the program. Applicants also said they preferred to learn about residencies from current residents, program directors and interviewing faculty.
Luk and co-authors said it was possible applicants placed future job opportunities at a high priority because of documented difficulties in the radiology job market. Salaries, tours, letters of intent and dedicated research time were all among the weaker drives for potential residents.
“Based on these findings, a well-organized interview day to showcase a residency program’s clinical and academic strengths along with interactions with radiology staff and trainees can give the applicants a critical opportunity to evaluate program culture and camaraderie,” the researchers wrote. “Furthermore, the interview day can be tailored to meet the specific needs of applicant subgroups such as DR/IR pathway candidates, applicants with a focus on research and those seeking a future career in academic radiology.”
After graduating from Indiana University-Bloomington with a bachelor’s in journalism, Anicka joined TriMed’s Chicago team in 2017 covering cardiology. Close to her heart is long-form journalism, Pilot G-2 pens, dark chocolate and her dog Harper Lee.