Last year, I made a New Year’s resolution to make more content available as video podcasts.
And unlike some of my other resolutions, I made good on this one. I posted 27 videos on my YouTube channel, and although viewership remains modest, I’ve gotten strong engagement and feel like it’s created a more durable way to share many ideas (vs. the ephemeral nature of Twitter/X).
Unfortunately, prioritizing video has meant that the volume of content I publish here has suffered. I’ll try to strike a better balance in 2024, but to be sure that readers don’t miss out, I’m gonna kick off the year by counting down the Top 10 Most Viewed Videos of 2023.
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10. Match Day 2023: Winners & Losers Edition
The first of three Winners & Losers™️ videos that made the list, this one covered the emergency medicine SOAP crisis, Match Day data misinterpretation, Match rate fibbing, the impact of a pass/fail Step 1 and preference signaling, the value of matching at your #1, and much more.
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9. The Match, Part 1: Why Do We Have a Match?
Although this video was published in 2022, it still got enough views to beat out most of my 2023 content.
As a standalone piece, this one explains the history leading to the first resident match. But it also serves as the gateway to a sprawling and expansive six-part series covering other key events in Match history, including the student-led rebellion to change the original match algorithm (Part 2); one physician’s 20 year fight for a student-optimal matching algorithm (Part 3); the logic and implementation of the NRMP All In policy (Part 4); the salacious story of the antitrust lawsuit against the NRMP, AAMC, and ACGME (Part 5); and finally, my answer to the question, “Would we be better off without a Match?” (Part 6).
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8. Academic Capitalism: Rethinking the Expansion of Subspecialty Fellowships
This is a video about the steady increase in subspecialty fellowships – and the less-than-completely-honest justifications that are made for them. It’s a video about who really wins – and loses – when we prolong medical training more and more. It’s about how we’ve enabled a kind of academic capitalism that benefits those who have seized control of the means of production at the expense of those who are lower on the pyramid… and what we ought to do about it.
(If you’re interested in the history of the pediatric hospital medicine fellowship, this one is for you.)
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7. The ERAS Preliminary Data Drop: Winners & Losers Edition
The second Winners & Losers™️ video on the list covered the first round of data from the 2023-2024 application cycle. If you want to know why many pediatric residency programs will be in the SOAP, whether EM will rebound, or why Application Fever is slowing down, I covered all that and more.
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6. A Brief Update on USMLE Score Creep
In 1994, the mean USMLE Step 2 CK score was 200.
In 2023, it was 248.
Over that time frame, the USMLE has increased the minimum passing score threshold nine times, from 167 to 214.
This video explains why USMLE scores are rising – and what that means for current medical students, residency applicants, and program directors. (I also make a bold prediction about how the format of the USMLE will change in the very near future.)
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5. Residency Application Mailbag: The Personal Statement
The first of two Mailbag videos that made the Top 10 is this one, in which I answered questions about the personal statement, including:
Should I write a creative personal statement? Should I share sensitive personal information in my personal statement? Do I have to include a patient encounter in my personal statement? Should I discuss my USMLE failure in my personal statement? Should I write program-specific personal statements? Is it okay to write a two-page personal statement? How do I make my personal statement better?
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4. Match Day Mailbag, Part 2: Why Does it Take So Long to Get Match Results (And Top 5 Match Day Mishaps)
The second Mailbag to make the Top 10 answered just one simple question: why does it take so long to get Match results? So, as an added bonus, I also counted down the Top 5 Match Day Mishaps.
(If you’re not interested in scaring yourself silly about what can go wrong on Match Day, I did answer some other Match Day-related questions in Part 1.)
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3. The Applicant’s Guide to Strategic Preference Signaling
Preference signaling has become an increasingly impactful element of the residency selection process. I put this video out at the end of the summer to give this year’s applicants a logic- and data-driven way of approaching this increasingly high-stakes decision.
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2. Rank Order List: Buyers and Sellers Edition
This video actually premiered in 2021, but still got enough of an audience to come in near the top of the 2023 list. The topic, though, is evergreen: analyzing what factors are overvalued – and which are undervalued – when deciding how to rank residency programs.
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1. Bypassing Residency for IMGs in Tennessee: Winners & Losers Edition
In April, Tennessee passed legislation changing the longstanding requirement that international medical graduates complete a U.S.-based residency training in order to become licensed.
This was big news – so in May, I broke down the Winners & Losers™️ on this site and YouTube. By July, the story got coverage in mainstream outlets like Becker’s Hospital Review… and by November, the issue finally got analyzed in the New England Journal of Medicine.
(So anyway, if you’re interested in hearing the hot takes months before everyone else, be sure to subscribe.)
To everyone who took the time to read, watch, or listen to any of my thoughts in 2023 – thank you. I wish you all my best for a happy and healthy 2024.
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The Sheriff of Sodium 