139 - The Impact of Medical School-PM&R Residency Program Affiliation on Match Patterns: A 5-Year Comparative Analysis

The objective was to investigate the impact of having a PM&R residency program affiliated with medical schools on match rates into PM&R and its geographic distribution over time.

Design:

Match data was gathered from publicly available match lists. A list of PM&R residency programs was obtained from the AAP website to note those affiliated with medical schools.

From 2020-2024, 128 allopathic schools were included, of which 66 have affiliates with PM&R residencies. Prism was used to perform unpaired t-tests comparing the percentage of students matching into PM&R between schools with and without affiliates and across time, and a two-way ANOVA test comparing the percentage of students matching into the same geographic region as their medical school by region and the presence of an affiliate.

Results:

From 2020-2024, 1.44% of students from schools with an affiliate matched into PM&R compared to 1.02 % from those without (t=4.10, p=.0001). On average, 26.18% of students from schools with affiliates matched into their home program. Notably, the percentage of students matching into the same geographic area has increased from 25.6% in 2020 to 56.8% in 2024 (t=5.21, p=0.0001).

Approximately 50.2% of students from schools with a PM&R affiliate matched into a program within the same geographic region compared to 38.1% of students from schools with no affiliate (F(1,414) = 8.67, p =0.003). Notably, 72.4% of students from medical schools with an affiliate in the Pacific region matched to a program within the region as compared to 33.3% in schools without an affiliate. Similar trends were found in East South Central (45.0%, 15.0% respectively) and New England (40.0%, 20.0% respectively).

Conclusions:

These data suggest that there is a positive correlation between having an affiliated PM&R residency program and matching into physiatry, as well as matching into the same geographic region.