Match Day 2009

Match Day Results: Almost Five Times the National Average

34% of Duluth Medical Campus Graduates Select Family Medicine Residencies; Another 24% Chose Primary Care

March 25, 2009 -- 34 percent of the 50 students who began their medical education in Duluth in 2005 and are graduating this spring were matched to Family Medicine residency programs at the Match Day event held on the University of Minnesota campus in the Twin Cities on March 19. Another 24 percent of the Duluth graduates selected other primary care specialties such as Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, and Med/Peds. The remaining 42 percent chose other specialties, including emergency medicine, anesthesiology, and orthopedic surgery. Last year 46 percent of the graduating Duluth seniors selected family medicine. 

The Duluth percentage of students entering family medicine residencies is 4.6 times the national average according to statistics provided by the National Medicine Residency Program (NMRP), a private, not-for-profit corporation established to provide a uniform data of appointments to positions in graduate medical education.  According to the NMRP, 7.4 percent of graduating seniors chose family medicine compared to Duluth’s 34 percent.  The organization’s data tables also show that 34.2 percent of graduating seniors chose other primary care specialties compared to Duluth’s 24 percent.

This year marked the largest Match Day in United States history, with more than 24,000 students placing in residencies around the nation. Of the 206 students who matched from the University of Minnesota Medical School, both campuses, about 47 percent went into primary care – up from about 44 percent in 2008.

“Duluth continues to meet its mission, and I give the credit to our faculty and community physicians who inspire our students, and to the students who work so hard at becoming a great doctor no matter what field they choose,” commented Gary Davis, senior associate dean of the University of Minnesota Medical School—Duluth Campus.  “Nevertheless, the specialties that pay more are enticing our family medicine and primary care students who leave medical school $170,000 in debt. Greater Minnesota needs those doctors, and we need the scholarships and other ways of attracting them to select and stay in that specialty.” 

Pictured: Kristi and Matt Florek celebrate Match Day with daughter Charlotte. The "couples matched" to Mayo for Family Medicine, their first choice.

Primary care and family medicine is important especially to hospitals and clinics in Greater Minnesota. In 2007, according to the Rural Health Resource Center, 19 health care employers in Greater Minnesota reported they had 168 physician vacancies and were recruiting 284 physicians. Primary care accounted for 56 percent of the physician vacancies. 47 percent of Duluth alumni practice in communities smaller than 20,000 people and 75 percent of Duluth alumni practice medicine in Minnesota or western Wisconsin.   

Recently, Davis proposed that a new interprofessional rural healthcare education model be developed to address rural healthcare shortages, and he is working with UMD and the Academic Health Center Schools of Pharmacy and Nursing to shape that proposal.