The competition for residency positions is ruthless.
The selection process consumes the entire 4th year of medical school… and the arms race consumes the hearts and minds of medical students long before then. Our focus on normative metrics – which don’t even predict physician quality – works against a growth mindset, may foster harmful bias, and creates a barrier to implementing competency-based medical education.
So what if…
…we replaced the arms race with a lottery among qualified applicants?
It’s a provocative idea, and a new paper in Academic Medicine argues that we should.
But would a lottery really remove bias – or just undermine merit? Will it reduce the arms race – or just move the goalposts? What are the unintended consequences for international medical graduates, the Match, competitive specialties, and medical education in general? How should we select future physicians?
It’s time for a Sheriff of Sodium Journal Club.
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The Sheriff of Sodium 