Dr. Chang agreed, noting that urology, another surgical specialty, had a less dramatic version of otolaryngology’s match problem this year. “Surgical specialties are a little more unpredictable in work days and calls to emergency cases than other, nonsurgical, specialties like ER, radiology, and dermatology.”
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June 2018Ksenia Aaron, MD, a neurotologist fellow at Stanford University in California and a recent graduate from the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, found that some students in her rotation who initially pursued otolaryngology moved to different specialties. “When I’d follow up and see where they matched, at least 20% went on to a completely different subspecialty,” she said. “Being in surgery sometimes 12 to 14 hours might not fit what they envisioned.”
Loss of otolaryngology curriculum. Many program directors believe that students may not be exposed to otolaryngology due to a lessening of the specialty’s presence in current medical school curriculum. “Otolaryngology has been taken out of the curriculum at Ohio State,” said Dr. Elmaraghy. “It had been reduced over the last several years, and we noticed a reciprocal decline in students being interested in the field.”
“Otolaryngology is a fairly small, very specialized field,” agreed Dr. Gray. “If students don’t get that exposure, especially early on during the first and second years of medical school, then by the time they’re preparing for the match they’re missing a lot of components.”
“It’s impossible to match in otolaryngology.” Another concern is whether the selectiveness of otolaryngology programs actually dissuades some students from applying. “Until just a few years ago, we were suggesting that program directors be more honest if they thought applicants didn’t have a strong application,” said Barry Schaitkin, MD, chair-elect of the OPDO and professor and residency program director at the University of Pittsburgh, whose program didn’t fill its quota this year for the first time. “So we started putting out the message that otolaryngology was a specialty that’s very hard to get into, and if your application didn’t have certain accolades, it put you at risk for not matching.”
“As a third-year medical student, it was extremely daunting to look at the average scores and the match rate,” said David R. Lee, MD, a PGY-3 resident at the University of Cincinnati department of otolaryngology–head and neck surgery who participated in the 2015 match. “The attendings who told medical students to not apply to ENT were just looking out for their students’ best interests, because to not match is a terrible thing—you’ve gone through four years of medical school, and then you don’t have a job.”