Preparing for Residency

Meet Your Match: Prepare to navigate SOAP with Victoria Gordon, DO

Feb 21, 2024 . 33 MIN READ

Making the Rounds

Meet Your Match | Prepare to navigate SOAP with Victoria Gordon, DO

Feb 21, 2024

Speakers

Victoria Gordon, DO, second-year emergency medicine resident, University of Houston-HHH Kingwood
Brendan Murphy, senior news writer, American Medical Association

Host

Todd Unger, chief experience officer, American Medical Association

Listen on the go to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or anywhere podcasts are available.

Transcript

Gordon: And I sat there thinking, why should I believe in myself? I didn't match, but there's a lot of reasons why people don't match. And most of them probably aren't that you were a poor interviewer, or you didn't have a great story to tell. A lot of them are probably systemic. So, you know, trust yourself. You prepared hard the first time. You'll do fine the second time.

Unger: That was Dr. Victoria Gordon, a second-year emergency medicine resident in Texas. On this episode of Making the Rounds, Dr. Gordon talks about her personal experience going through SOAP—the Supplemental Offer and Acceptance Program—after getting the devastating news that she didn’t initially match. She’ll talk about what M4s should do in this unexpected and stressful situation. Here’s AMA senior news writer, Brendan Murphy.

Murphy: Hello and welcome to Making the Rounds. I'm Brendan Murphy, senior news writer at the AMA. Today, I'm talking with Dr. Victoria Gordon, a second-year emergency medicine resident at University of Houston, HHH Kingwood. Welcome, Dr. Gordon. How are you today?

Gordon: I'm good, just busy like most residents are, working a lot.

Murphy: We understand that you're busy and we appreciate your time. We're very excited to have you here to talk about your experience matching through the Supplemental Offer and Acceptance Program, commonly referred to as SOAP. For the uninitiated, SOAP can be a vehicle through which unmatched medical students find a home for residency.

So, let's talk about your circumstances. On Monday, Match Week 2022, you find out you didn't match. Can you walk us through how that worked for you and what your thoughts were?

Gordon: Yeah, it was not the best morning of my life. I'm sure anyone who's been in my situation feels similarly. I had applied orthopedic surgery, which is a notoriously competitive specialty to apply to. I had not applied with a backup because I, at that point, hadn't even really done my ER rotation and later had realized that would have been the secondary specialty I applied to, but I didn't like anything else. I went all in.

I had about 11 interviews, which is close to that kind of magic number of orthopedic surgery. So, I was a strong candidate. My school wasn't worried about me. My friends weren't worried about me. So about two weeks before Match Day, I was like, you know what? I can relax. We're gonna have a good time. And I was … woke up that morning to the email on the floor of my friend’s studio apartment on an air mattress, because I had gone to a wedding out of town that weekend. I was planning to spend the week. It was out of town at the time, I had moved for my rotations, but it was back where my medical school was. So I planned to visit with people, because everyone kind of hangs out Match week. That obviously got a little derailed for me, but yes, I woke up on the floor in my friend's studio apartment, and realized that my world was gonna collapse in on me a little bit there.

Murphy: So you got the news, how did you feel, and what did you do afterward?

Gordon: If I’m being honest, that whole week is … there's some blur there because so much is happening. But my friends told it back to me later because they had woken up earlier than me, but I was sleeping. They didn't want to disturb me. And they said, “We heard you rustle. We heard you look at your phone and then we didn't hear anything. And we knew it was not good.”

My friends weren't in medicine that I was staying with, so all they knew it was not good. I think I just laid there for like 30 minutes in the bed being like, man, I wish I was still asleep. I wish I did not know this news. I gave myself about 30 to 45 minutes to kind of just lay there and pretend it hadn't happened. And then I got up and started thinking of a plan.

Murphy: Yeah, that is one of the sort of crazy circumstances about the SOAP process is that it takes place the same day you find out you don't match, you have to spring to action. So what does that look like? How did you mobilize and process the news at the same time?

Gordon: Yeah, so actually, prior to this, I'm very lucky. I have lots of friends in the AMA, which means I have lots of friends of varying years and levels of training and people to give me advice. And a lot of my friends had been like, you know, mobilize a team, be with your friends. And part of being in my medical school city that week was in case any of my friends had to SOAP, I was going to help them. I was going to be available to help them.

Turns out it was me and there weren't a lot of people available. So that would have been my first piece of advice is, you know, try and mobilize people who know what they're doing. Like I said, I was staying with friends who weren’t involved in medicine, and they weren't super helpful just because they had no idea what to do. So, you know, the first big decision you make is what are you going to do? When you're someone like me applying from a very competitive specialty, there's no spots there in that specialty. There's nowhere for you to go.

So you have to decide, you know, am I going to try and pursue a research year? Am I going to apply to a different specialty? Am I going to hold out and wait and see if spots come up after the SOAP? All which comes with their individual challenges, and you know, benefits and risks. Because obviously if you wait until after the SOAP, maybe you don't get anything. If you apply for a research year, maybe you don't get anything. And then obviously if you SOAP into another specialty, there's a whole host of problems with that coming with changing your life expectations. How much do you know about that specialty? Are you really prepared to be a part of that, that world? So that was my first step is deciding what I wanted to do. Did I want to pursue the SOAP process? And in my mind, the risks of waiting were much greater. So I decided to pursue SOAP. That was the great emergency medicine year where it kind of, everything kind of imploded for that specialty.

And because I had recently done that rotation and had, you know, had the thought, ‘Oh, if I had to apply for backup, this would be the one,’ that's kind of what spurred me on. And it feels like this is a decision that should be made over like days or weeks, and it was frankly a decision that I made in an hour, which seems insane now looking back at it, but that's, you know, all the time you have. You have to pick a path and go down and you can't pick multiple paths, there's not enough time.

Murphy: You mentioned that it was the emergency medicine year. That was 2022. And that in that year, there were 200 positions, 200 plus positions available through SOAP. And it was kind of similar last year. It was actually double that number. So, you're an M4 at the University of Kansas City Medical School, and you're processing all this and you have to move immediately. So, how'd you end up on emergency medicine? You mentioned you hadn't even done your rotation when you initially applied.

Gordon: Yeah, when I actually applied I hadn't done it, but you apply actually in September of your fourth year. And most schools don't make you do your mandatory ER rotation until sometime in your fourth year and you're auditioning at the beginning. So, most people put it kind of in December, January, February. So, between the time of application and SOAP, I had done it which helped some, but you know, I was looking at it at a very different perspective. I was like, I'm about to graduate. Like things are easy. I'm here to learn. This is great. And not really evaluating it as a specialty.

But that was, yeah, that was the year like the big EM jobs report came out and obviously COVID hit that specialty very hard. It's already switched to with high burnout. And then you have, you know, some incredible once in a lifetime surge of very sick patients that drove a lot of people out of the specialty, discouraged a lot of students from joining. And frankly, a lot of students even didn't even get to rotate in it due to safety concerns or hospitals not taking them. So, it was kind of a decrease in the numbers of the generally competitive specialty. So, it seemed like that was maybe a sign that I had the thought that this would be my backup.

And then there were spots open in the specialty that I know for, I believe for a fact that the year before formerly had seven open spots. So, you know, that felt like the big sign in the sky saying you know, don't risk it, like try pivot, be flexible.

Murphy: SOAP applicants are given 45 tokens. Essentially that means you can apply to 45 programs. How'd you go about selecting those programs? Were they all in emergency medicine?

Gordon: No, they actually weren't all in emergency medicine. Most of them were. That's kind of the first thing you do this process. Once you decide what you want to do, it, that's the first you see, you see the whole list and you decide where you want to send those tokens. Some people will advise you to save one or two back, in case you ever want to like apply to an extra one during the process. I used all of them.

What are the odds you're going to go re-evaluate programs—it’s low. Like if you interview at several, you're not going to be like, oh, I wish I had given it to this one. It's you're just overwhelmed. You might as well put all your chances out there. But for me, there was still like a like a sense of indecision. If I wanted to continue to pursue ortho, one great way to do that is to do a surgical prelim year. So, I did send out a couple of tokens to surgical prelim years. I didn't end getting any interviews there, but I got a bunch of interviews with EM.

So I think it was maybe like eight to 10 of my tokens went to prelim years and then the rest went to EM. And when you select those programs, I mean, for me, I had already kind of lost everything. I was like, I didn't achieve my goal. I didn't match. I don't have a job. This is terrifying. And I just ended up basically picking places that were the least amount of unknown I could find. So did I know someone at that program? Did I know someone in the area? Was it close to family? Did I wanna live in an area like that? Those were the questions I asked. I didn't apply anywhere I didn't want to live because if I was going to be changing specialties and changing my life, I wanted to have at least a benefit in location or type of program or anything like that. So, pick a known would be my advice.

Murphy: There are so many unknowns in this process, so that makes a lot of sense. What type of legwork did you have to do? This is reapplying and you have essentially … how long before your applications were in? I guess I should ask. And then what did you do to keep up with the brisk pace of the process?

Gordon: Yeah, they kind of switch this every year, what the timeframe was, but generally within 24 to less than more than 24, but like less than 48 hours. So I think it was 5 p.m. on Tuesday that it was due and interviews were Wednesday and Thursday, if I am not completely incorrect, but it was more than 24, but less than 48.

And you do feel this need to completely revamp your application. But in all honesty, seeing it from the other side last year, they are evaluating your application, but they also know that you are SOAPing and they are looking at it less as fully revamped. But some of the major things are A, selecting those programs and selecting the right ones for you, which requires looking at the entire list of whatever specialty you're applying to, which is not easy, right? It's probably like 100 EM programs and like, 30 prelim years and evaluating what their location is and do you know anyone there?

I just had this giant table that I was adding all of this information to so that I could review it later and crossing them off as I found because there are so many. If I was like, this detail is like, I'm not interested in this one after seeing where this location is, just cutting it off the list. That leaves a lot of doubt and a lot to be desired, right, because what if I cut off my future program because what if I typed in the location wrong? Or because I misjudged it, but you know you don't have much time to think and at that point. You know everyone's like “quality over quantity” but you're just moving meat at that point you're just trying to get it through and figure it out. So, you select your tokens you have to revamp your applications in terms of likely you have to write a new personal statement which is hilarious because everyone's like, take time on your personal statement. This would take you weeks or months to craft. And you change it all in a day. I took the body of my original one and kept it because a lot of people's why is similar. If your why is, I only want to be an orthopedic surgeon. That's the only reason I went to medical school that seems like such a huge risk, right? We know this happens, we don't match. They want people's opinions changed.

And that’s not really what happens. People go to medical school to be a doctor. So, your why is there. You just have to reframe it. And I make that sound easy. It's not. That's the worst day of your life. But taking that why, trying to reframe it in the context of a new adventure would be my recommendation there. And then the other thing that I had to do was reach out for letters of recommendation. I didn't have any emergency medicine letters of recommendation.

That specialty does require a SLOE generally, which is a special type of letter, but they did not require that throughout the SOAP for people. But I did want to show that I had done a good job on my EM rotation and that I had interest in this. I was very lucky. My preceptor from EM was more than willing to write me a letter very quickly. I had recently done a trip to Guatemala with my medical school with some EM physicians who were happy to write me a letter very quickly. I was very lucky there. Not everyone will have that and while that is something that's important, again, being on the other side of it, you do take people without EM letters and EM, I can't speak for the specialties, but program directors are aware how scary and how unprepared you are. And frankly, they are upset they haven't filled. So, they're on the same different side of the coin, but same problem. So that's kind of the main point is, your personal statement, choosing your programs and making sure that you have those letters of recommendation if you can get some.

Murphy: You talk about reframing your why in that personal statement. How did you do that?

Gordon: Some soul-searching and actually calling my friends. You know, sometimes when you're in crisis mode, the people closest to you know you better than anyone else. Because you know, you feel like you wake up, you knew who you were, you knew what you were doing, and all of a sudden that's kind of stripped from you. But your friends don't see you that way, and your friends don't feel that way about you. So I called up two my friends and asked for advice, and they helped me rewrite it in terms of ... I think what actually happened is someone took my personal statement, rewrote it for me kind of in my own words, and then let me edit what they rewrote. Oh, this is not how I would say this. Oh, I like this idea. I don't like that idea. And it helped to have that support in terms of … it's hard to look at something you spent hours and hours on and change it just enough. Whereas when someone else comes through and strips it, it's easier to be like, oh yeah, this is great. So it was nice to have support on that. But yeah, your friends can be like a mirror during this time and reflect back at you what you're having a hard time figuring out.

Murphy: So peer support, very important. That is one of the key takeaways from this. How many interviews did you have on Wednesday and Thursday of that week? How'd you go about preparing for them? How do you even find out when you're getting them?

Gordon: Yeah, so I ended up getting even luckier. So, I had a friend who was SOAPing in Joplin, which is Kansas City University, like other campus, we've one in Kansas City and one in Joplin. And so, his … we were all, you know, friends, but three of them were down there. One was SOAPing, two were helping him. So they came and picked me up and kind of took me under their wing. And were like, we're going to get you prepared because it is insanity for, it can be insanity, it just depends. But for me, I ended up having almost 25 interviews, if I remember correctly, in 48 hours, which is a blessing to have that much interest when you are terrified without a job, but it's also almost impossible to manage, right? Because these are not coming out through a system, they're not coming out really through emails. You're just getting calls from program directors or residents, they're like, do you want to interview?

And so, I would be on interviews before I kind of got scooped up and I'd be getting calls from other places and you're like, ‘Well, if I miss this call, maybe I don't get to interview there. And I like this place so much more than the one I'm on the interview with right now.’ So, it just like, you need people like manage your schedule and your calendar, which is insane. It's, it's kind of free for all situation. It's not, you know, the Match is so structured with so many rules and then. So has that same structure and rules, but once they release the applications, it's like to the wind, free for all.

Murphy: And how'd you go preparing for those interviews, the 25 you had?

Gordon: You don't. You don't have any time. You spent all year preparing to interview. Pretty much the only thing I did was have a little piece of paper with a couple of very specific EM experiences I could pull from. But you spent an entire year interviewing. You have to lean into that and believe in yourself.

And I think I sat there thinking, why should I believe in myself? I didn't match, but there's a lot of reasons why people don't match. And most of them probably aren't that you were a poor interviewer, or you didn't have a great story to tell. A lot of them are probably systemic. You know, there are a limited number of programs and there are limited over programs that people really want to be at, you know, based on location, based on size of program, based on all of these external factors and you're competing against the best of the best. So, you know, trust yourself. You prepared hard the first time. You'll do fine the second time. Just make sure you have a couple of bullet points that are specific to whatever specialty you're trying to apply to because you are not going to remember much. You're going to feel completely overwhelmed and having that kind of centering little space for points that maybe you don't know by heart will be helpful.

Murphy: So, you go through that speed dating SOAP process of interviews, dozens of programs. We get to Thursday of match week. That's when SOAP offers can go out in four rounds. Can you walk us through how that worked for you?

Gordon: If you asked my friends, I would say, not well. You know, it's one thing to interview for the SOAP and it's one thing to take that path. And I think I found it really hard to like click the accept button. Something that I think people maybe don't talk about enough is once you accept that SOAP offer, you are locked in. If you get any other offers from your original specialty—you get a research position offer, you can't take it without risk of not being able to enter the Match again. And as you know, most specialties run through the Match, it's so important to have that option to enter the Match again. I think I know if some people have been banned for five years and what are you going to do with five years of your life? So, you know, it was one thing for me to prepare and have these options and these offers. And I woke up that morning and I was like I don't know if I want to do it. Like, I don't know if I want to do this.

And I'm sure there are multiple people every year across the country that feel the same way when they wake up. But I woke up, my friends dragged me out of bed. They were like, listen, you did this. You know, this is the right move for you. We've got you. We'll be here to support you. And so, you go and you check your email and the SOAP goes by rounds. So, I believe there's four rounds, and programs rank all the people and they say a program has five spots open and they interviewed 35 people, they rank them one to 35, and in the first round offers go out to their top 5. So, it's a game for programs as well. They want to send out offers to the best candidates, but also the people they think will accept. Because after that first round, all of those names that have accepted are pulled out, and then the programs next top 5 that are still available if they had no one accept are sent offers, right? So, say a program sends to the best five SOAP applicants in the country.

And like somehow, they're all their scores are 270. They all, you know, had 4.0s and just like, didn't match for some reason. And because of that, they get excellent offers at their top SOAP programs. So that program sent their best five offers out. And now all of the top, the people that were most wanted or whatever gets taken. And now the program is down to their list, like 27, 28, 29, 30, because everyone they really liked went in the first round, or everyone they thought would be a great fit went in the first round. So that's part of the game that I think people don't understand is, is these programs are wooing you and they want you because they have a lot more at risk than in the Match, where it's just like a back-and-forth algorithm. So when you go look at your offers, you need to know that A, if you don't get an offer from your top program, that doesn't mean you won't in the second round.

But also, doesn't mean there won't be an offer waiting for you in the second round if you don't take one in the first. So adds a level of stress to it that, you know, the Match takes out by just spitting out something. There's less on the applicant and less on the programs to kind of game the system. So I get over the computer, like all of this swirling in my head. And I have five offers and I ended up … I'm at a program where I knew people, I went with the known, in a big city where there's lots to do and lots of food to try. So, I've enjoyed the food scene out here in Houston.

But the funny part of the story is, is because I had waited so long, there was about like five or 10 minutes left to, you know, accept your offer. I finally was like, you know what? I'm going to do it. I'm going to try this and park on this new adventure. And I had forgotten my password. And apparently you need to know your password by heart to accept your SOAP offer. So that is another big tip is actually know your password. You know, because now we're all just like touch ID or face ID, but you can do that. You have to physically type it in. There's this video of me that my friends took because they were like, “One day you're going want to remember this moment.” And I'm not sure that I'm like there yet, even to almost two years later, but it's funny video because they're like, you're doing it, you're doing it. And then I'm like “I don't know my password. I don't know how I'm going to be able to accept this offer.” And they're like, “Victoria, what is wrong with you?” So, know your password.

Murphy: You did get it resolved before the shot clock expired?

Gordon: I did, yeah, they actually were very smart people and they were like, ‘You need to accept it, you only have like a couple minutes left.’ And I had no idea what time it was, like what time it ended. My friends were keeping me on track. Big thank you to them. I can never pay them back for the kindnesses they showed me that week. But they had lied to me about how much time I had left so we had some time to change my password.

Murphy: This is just stressful listening to.

Gordon: It's very stressful. There's a lot of like gaming and thoughts, and all of this, when you're at your like lowest, when you are like, your brain power is dead, gone. You've experienced, it's a loss like of the life you thought you were going to have. It's like a grieving process, but you also have to move forward right away. You know, we talk about grieving being like steps in a process and this is all happening at the same time, which I think is very tough, and you know, shout out to all my SOAPers out there. I know you guys are a brave bunch.

Murphy: So you've accepted your offer. We're past Thursday, we're into Friday at Match Week. It's Match Day. A lot of schools have big ceremonies. You've had a crazy week. How did you spend your Match Day?

Gordon: Yeah, so as I think I discussed a little earlier, I actually went to my school's other campus to see my friends, which was actually very nice for me because I was able to kind of celebrate my Match Day a little bit without everyone knowing, “Oh, why are you in EM? You applied ortho.” There was none of that. No one really knew me there. So that was actually a good move. It's something I would recommend if you have that option. But it was funny because, you know, with the friends I was with, they all had gotten their offers that morning. So everyone, you know, sat in a circle, they opened their offers together. And even though everyone knew where I was, we all pretended I was like, “emergency medicine in Houston.” And I was like, “what?” It was, you know, a little dark humor at the time. I think the weirdest part is that, you know, you have just gone through the worst part of your life. But not all my friends ended up where they wanted to be, even though they were in their specialty.

So there's—they could be like, I'm so sorry that I'm saying this. Like I'm at least lucky to have matched my specialty. I was like, “Nah, like this process has brought us all closer together.” It's not that fair. It kind of stinks. It's kind of uncool that an algorithm decides where you live for the next four years without any choice, really. You can't back out. You can't do any of that. So, there was like two sides of the coin is that we were all there to celebrate together, but also you can be there for the friends who were there for you at your worst time. So, after we kind of all got over the shock of people who didn't quite end up where they wanted to and all that, we just, you know, went to the school, they had food, there was pizza and games and we all just kind of hung out. Which was nice because at the end of the day you're all moving soon. So it's, you know, besides graduation, it's kind of one last hurrah together. But you know, not the Match Day I envisioned, but not the worst day of my life either, so it was nice to be with friends.

Murphy: When it comes to match week, the advice is always be prepared for anything. What advice would you give in regards to the SOAP process? Because 5% of applicants every year are not going to match. What would you say, just in case you're in that 5%, should you have anything prepared?

Gordon: Yeah, you know, I, I'm like a hope for the best kind of person. And now I want to be a hope for the best prepared for the worst kind of person after this, but I think definitely, make sure you have a team. Like I had made myself available to my friends but hadn't communicated to them why I was doing that. And so initially, you know, I didn't have a lot of friends support because no one else understood what it was going to entail. And I had actually seen someone go through it the year before and I understood that you need multiple people around you. And no one else really knew that. So have a team in place beforehand and you all talk to each other and agree like, “Hey, on Monday, if none of us match, we are all going to like come together, spend the day together and we're going to figure this out for whoever needs it.” Having a team in place is something you can do beforehand that doesn't really detract from your joy. That's another thing, when people are preparing for their worst, I was like, you're detracting from the joy and the experience of Match Week and possibly matching. So, you know, you can't write personal statements for every specialty in anticipation, but having a team is one of the best things you can do. When you're asking for letters of recommendation throughout the year, I would recommend asking from a variety of specialties.

So you can have those on hand. If there are any specialties you're considering dual applying to or applying backup or anything like that, getting an extra letter of recommendation. In hindsight, I wish I had asked my EM preceptor immediately so that, if I so, do you mind writing me a letter just so I can have this instead of asking her to turn it around for me in 24 hours. I was very lucky that she was able to, and I was very lucky that the other doctor I'd worked to was able to, but you know attendings are busy.

If you catch some EM docs on a long string of shifts, you're not getting that done. So having letter of recs having a team, you know, I think one of the biggest tips is not really preparation but just cutting yourself some slack. Like it's not going to be perfect. Your enemies are not going to be perfect. You know, you're going to want to cry the whole day, but you know you made it through medical school you are strong, and you can do it. And like I said, my final tip is: know your password. Know your password.

Murphy: You said at the top of this podcast that you go to medical school to be a doctor. It's two years later. You're a doctor via the SOAP process. How do you feel about how it worked out for you?

Gordon: People ask me this a lot at my program. It was a struggle for me at first. The two specialties people think are similar and they are in so many ways, but they're also very different. In terms of knowledge base and flow and how you manage things. Like surgical subspecialties are like a hierarchy, right? It's like the senior resident tells the junior resident what to do, tells the intern what to do, tells the student what to do and I was very comfortable in that. In ER, like I walked in on day one and they wanted me to make my own decisions. I was like, “Excuse me. Excuse me, yesterday I was not a doctor, today I am.” I think there's still, I think most people who would agree, there's still pain about losing and the grief from what you lost, but also there's so much more opportunity as well. And I've tried to reframe it like that for myself. I see a wide variety of pathology. I see people on the worst day of their life all the time, which is not really something I would always see in Ortho. I've got to move to a new city, I get to try new food. My cost of living is manageable here while still being in a big metropolitan area.

I, at this point in PGY-2, am beginning to feel confident in my skills. I know like intern year, you know, they say it's the biggest curve, but I think PGY-2 you kind of have that Dunning-Kruger curve where like now I know what I don't know and that's terrifying. Like intern year, you just you're like, I don't know anything. And now I'm like, “Oh my god, I have so much more, so much farther to go before attending-hood.” But it's nice to, you know, progress and get the trust of my attendings and see that when people ask me if I'm if I miss ortho and I think the answer is yes, but I think the other side of that is I've really grown to love EM. I've grown to love the fast pace, the procedures, really taking care of the entire patient instead of just one problem. EM, I think, is the great, you know, a little bit about everything is what people say, but actually looking at some of my attendings that—you know, I respect all my attendings—but my program director who's been there and done that, he knows a lot about everything. And I think that's such a special section of medicine to know a lot about everything about how to save people in the worst moments of their life. So, anyone who's looking to SOAP this year, if EM has spots, give it a thought. I would say there's a lot to love there. There's a lot to love.

Murphy: Well, after this podcast, I don't know if I can say our listeners will know a lot about everything, but thanks to your expertise, I do think they will know a lot about SOAP.

Gordon: Now you know what? That's the goal. I don't know a lot about everything like I said, maybe one day, but we all will know a lot about SOAP.

Murphy: Dr. Gordon, we appreciate you taking the time to be on the show today. Thanks for sharing your expertise with such candor.

Gordon: I'm happy to be here and if I help one person, that's the goal is to get one person through what is probably one of the worst weeks of their life.

Murphy: This has been Making the Rounds. I'm AMA Senior News Writer Brendan Murphy. Thanks for listening.

Unger: The AMA is here to help you master the process to secure a residency match—learn more at ama-assn.org/meetyourmatch. Thanks for listening.

Disclaimer: The viewpoints expressed in this podcast are those of the participants and/or do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the AMA.