Career Mentors & 5-Year Data on the IUSM Anesthesiology Match

Abstract

Introduction: The IU Department of Anesthesia provides Anesthesiology Career Mentors to 3rd and 4th year medical students. We have approximately 47 requests per class year. In the past 5 years, we have matched 181 students into Anesthesiology, averaging 36 students per year (range 30-46). Where do these students match into Anesthesiology? How many of them use the Career Mentorship program? If they don’t choose Anesthesiology, which other specialties appeal to them? Objective: The purpose of this presentation is to examine the pipeline of students interested in anesthesiology who request a career mentor and match into anesthesiology. Methods: Match data from publicly obtained IUSM Graduation Booklets for the Class of 2017 through 2021 was filtered for those students matching into Anesthesiology Residency Programs. These programs were mapped and cross-referenced for medical school rankings based on the 2022 US News & World Report Medical School Rankings for Research. Anesthesiology career mentorship requests were tracked starting in 2019 for the class of 2020 onwards, so students who matched into Anesthesiology were cross-referenced with students who had formally requested Anesthesiology Career Mentors in 2020 and 2021. Students who had formally requested Anesthesiology Career Mentors in 2020 and 2021 were also cross-referenced with the IUSM Graduation Booklet data to see how many of these students matched into Anesthesiology or other fields. Results: Of the 181 students that have matched into Anesthesiology from 2017-2021, 63 students matched at IU (35%). The rest are distributed across the regions of the US, including residency programs at the top 25 medical schools including Harvard, NYU, Duke, Stanford, and UCSF. The majority of students matching into Anesthesiology request Anesthesiology Career Mentors, with 73% (48/66) of students assigned to mentors in the graduating class of 2020 and 2021. 96 mentors were requested in the class of 2020 and 2021, with 29 students (30%) not matching into Anesthesiology. These students may have changed careers and not applied to Anesthesiology. Many of these students choose to pursue other specialties, including Internal Medicine, Radiology, Pediatrics, Family Medicine, General Surgery, Obstetrics-Gynecology, Orthopedic Surgery, and Psychiatry. Some students were not listed in the IUSM Graduation Booklet or did not have a residency listed. Conclusion: Limitations of this analysis include students’ choice to publish their Match data in the IUSM Graduation Booklet and the possibility of some students being lost to follow up due to not graduating yet or changing their name. No direct link can be made between formally assigned Anesthesiology Career Mentors and the Match, especially since some students may have sought out informal mentorship. Anesthesiology continues to be a competitive field with high student interest. More research can be done to understand factors that influence student decisions for specialty and to track student alumni and follow their career progression into fellowship and the physician workforce. Additional data collection on the usefulness of the career mentorship program and ways to improve and further support student career choice and Match success will be especially helpful as Step 1 changes to pass/fail.