can you re-match?

[Guest DillonMD]

Hi,

Let's say if someone didn't get match to their choice of specialty for residency and went into something else. Can they match in Carms again during their first year of residency?

Or do they have to first complete their first residency before they can switch?

thanks for any info.

[Guest Ian Wong]

Once you've started your residency, you can no longer enter the first round of the CaRMS match. Since most every competitive specialty fills up during the first round, you could only realistically apply for what is left in the second round (last year, this included tons of Family Medicine, small numbers of specialty spots including General Surgery, Pathology, Psychiatry, Community Medicine, a single spot for Cardiac surgery, Emerg Medicine, or Internal Medicine, etc).

 

Most people aren't insane enough to go for a second residency after the first one, and funding issues become prominent as you've already used up the funding on your first residency (as far as I know, unlike grad school, you can't just keep going back for more training if you want to).

 

As a result, you really want to match the first time into something you want, because it can be a huge pain to get into it later. Either that, or you can take the chance of not ranking a backup specialty, taking the year off, and reapplying to that specialty again (hopefully with a year's worth of research or other additions to your application).

 

Ian