Match Day: Did any of you choose to skip residency and go non-clinical?

Author: Riley Alexander, MD, MBA

St. Patrick's Day is also Match Day this year and for most senior medical students, it's the most important day of the year. It's one of those days that few outside of medicine have heard of and don't understand that, in many ways, it's much more important to medical students than graduation day. By the time you've gotten to 4th year, graduation seems like a "guarantee," but match seems very out of your control and because of that, finding out you matched in the specialty of your choice and where you'll be spending the next 3-7 years of your life is all the more important.

But, considering the nature of our blog, are there any of our readers out there who decided to forego the match and pursue a non-clinical path? Anyone go into consulting, pharma, biotech? Did you complete joint degree programs in medical school like an MD/MBA or MD/MPH?



Please let us know in the comments. We would love to hear your story and am sure our other readers would, too. And if you did, best of luck!

And to those who matched today...Congrats!

For those of you unfortunate enough not to match this week--Dr. Kim provided an earlier post with some great suggestions on what you can do--both non-clinical and clinical, here. It's a traumatic experience so having some idea of what you will do may provide a little relief.

Dr. Riley Alexander is a pathology resident at Indiana University School of Medicine, blog "addict" and avid follower of technology. His primary interests revolve around how technology, especially mobile, will create increased efficiency, enhanced physician education and better delivery of care in the medical field. Dr. Alexander is a graduate of Indiana University School of Medicine with a combined MD/MBA, in partnership with IU's Kelley School of Business. Due to this, he is also very interested in management, healthcare policy and non-clinical aspects of the medical field and enjoys exploring non-clinical opportunities for medical students, residents and physicians. He completed his undergraduate education at IU-Bloomington.