It's Match Day for Pharmacists! Here's what you need to know.
It's that time of the year. Medical and pharmacy students are anxiously waiting for the email telling them they got into a residency program. Tensions are high as they click into that email, thus sealing their fate for the next 1-3 years.
How To Prepare?
Most pharmacy schools are adequate when it comes to preparing their students for graduation. They want to make sure everyone completes the program as they intended. Nowhere in this preparation do they mention how to apply and interview for residency, despite a majority of their graduates choosing that path. Here is where my frustrations lie.
The platform for applying for residency is called Phorcas. Phorcas consolidates the application process so that each applicant fills out one set of paperwork, and that paperwork distributes to each program of their choice. This concept is similar if you are familiar with the Common App for undergraduate schools.
After the application process is complete, residency programs will start to send out interview offers to their chosen candidates. This means that you could apply to ten programs, but only two or three of them could offer you an interview. After the interviews are done, the matching process begins.
How does Match work?
The American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) Match program is used to help candidates and programs rank their top choices, and an algorithm will match them based on those rankings. Here is an example of how this matching works:
Let's say I apply for a residency program, got the interview, and ranked the program number one. The same program ranked me number two. But, the program's number one candidate only ranked them number five. That means that I would get the residency spot over the number one candidate. The rankings have to be high and similar enough to match.
For recent pharmacy graduates, the whole process is confusing, especially when no direction was provided by the pharmacy school. That is the reason why I write an article like this, to make the Match program easier to understand.
March 15th, 2023 is Match day for pharmacy residency programs. Candidates will receive an email stating if they match or not. The email does not disclose which program they matched into. Matching takes a lot of weight off your shoulders, especially after a lengthy interview process and a large deposit for the application fees.
What if I don't match?
You received your email and didn't match the programs you interviewed for. Don't worry, all is not lost. If a candidate did not match the first round, they have an opportunity to apply for empty residency spots through the second round. The process is the same, if not sped up for time's sake. Candidates get one more shot to match into a residency, albeit not their first choice.
In this article, I talked about what the pharmacy residency interview process is and what it entails. I also mentioned a step-by-step process for how to apply. The more information put out into the world about the match program, the less confusing it becomes.
Good luck to this year's candidates (including myself), you got this!