The Canadian Resident Matching Service (CaRMS) process is stressful for Canadian medical students and is a resource burden for family medicine programs. The results of the match are shared annually at the CaRMS forum during the Canadian Conference on Medical Education and are available on the CaRMS website.1 The mean number of applications by Canadian medical graduates (CMGs) in the 2020 match was 21.6, with one outlier at 113 applications.1 Concern about those students not matching to the residency of choice is unfounded for most CMGs, particularly for those matching to family medicine. For the first iteration of the match, 81.7% of CMGs matched to one of their top 3 programs, and of those who chose family medicine as their first-choice discipline, 98.4% matched.1 These outcomes suggest that most students could make 5 to 7 applications and still be successful in being matched to one of their top 3 choices. However, both students and faculties of medicine continue to focus on the small number of students who do not match to their programs of choice, and thus give advice to all students to apply broadly.
展开▼
