Pulse
Where do medicine's job opportunities lie?

CMAJ 2000;162(13):1865

Excluding applicants whose schools do not participate in the match (Laval, Sherbrooke, Montreal), 58% of graduates matched to a postgraduate training program at a faculty that wasn't the same as the one they graduated from. There was a significant increase in the number of couples (35) that entered the match, up 40% from last year. By contrast, the number of applicants sponsored by National Defence fell from 25 to 30 graduates in the early 1990s to 6 this year, a reflection on the military's recruiting woes.

Of those who matched this year, 88% received their first-choice discipline, although perhaps not in the location they wanted. The percentage of graduates choosing family medicine is down from 35% of the total in 1997 to 29% in 2000, even though the percentage of positions available for family medicine has remained relatively constant at around 38% of the total.

All program directors surveyed by CaRMS said that job opportunities in radiology, medical genetics, general surgery and thoracic surgery will improve in the next 5 years. Specialties in which the majority of program directors thought that opportunities would either remain constant or deteriorate were occupational medicine (100%), neurosurgery (77%), pediatrics (54%) and community medicine (50%).

In selecting students for their programs, a student's grades in electives in the program director's specialty rated as the most important academic achievement, followed by grades in mandatory clerkship rotations.

When asked to select the most important qualities of the ideal candidate, the qualities mentioned most often by program directors were a sense of responsibility (70%), integrity (54%) and communication skills (50%). — Lynda Buske, buskel@cma.ca

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