UF College of Medicine residency Match Day finds one-third of graduating seniors staying with UF

About one-third of the graduating seniors in the University of Florida’s College of Medicine won’t need to put away their orange-and-blue clothing anytime soon — they’ll be staying at their alma mater for residency training.

Thirty-three of the 110 students in the college’s senior class will enter residency training programs at UF, said Patrick Duff, M.D., a professor and associate dean of student affairs with the college. Residency assignments were formally announced March 20 at UF — and every other U.S. medical school — on Match Day, an annual rite of passage held this year at Emerson Alumni Hall.

All of UF’s graduating physicians have been successfully matched with residency programs in a wide range of medical and surgical specialties including family practice, internal medicine and surgery. Fifty students — about 45 percent — will stay in Florida while the rest pursue residency training in 21 other states and the District of Columbia.

Residency is a term of three to seven years of specialized training required before medical school graduates can provide unsupervised patient care.

Most residency assignments for U.S. medical schools are determined by a nonprofit corporation, the National Resident Matching Program. To participate, fourth-year students file requests listing the institutions where they would most like to train. Residency program directors, in turn, submit lists of their preferred applicants. Through a well-validated computer algorithm, the corporation then matches students with programs, trying to achieve the most favorable match for each individual.

“I am very proud of the efficiency, diligence and maturity which our students displayed throughout the match process,” Duff said. “I am confident they will be outstanding representatives of the University of Florida College of Medicine.”