Spine Fellowship 2010-2011

[fixbone]

Have been told by one program that there is a plan for a match this year, planned for October, meaning interviews would be in Sept-Oct. Has anyone else heard of this? Anyone else have info regarding the time frame for applying this year?

[High_Tourniquet]

I spoke to someone from NASS who said there are plans for a match for the spine fellowship year 2010-2011. This would make interviews sept-oct. I'm not sure if it is mandatory that interviews be in that period. I've been calling some programs. about 1/4 say they will participate in a match, 1/4 say they haven't even heard news of a match, 1/4 say they've heard but don't know yet what is going to happen and 1/4 say they'll refuse to participate. The match has fallen apart in the past, we'll see if it even happens this time around. All of this confusion is making it difficult on the part of the applicant to predict and plan for interviews.

Can anyone else add any insight into this? Will there really be a match? What programs do you know of that are participating? If there is a match, are you mandated to interview within the sept-oct period? Will there be a universial application? Thanks.

[wnlevine]

As a Residency Director (and Fellowship Director in shoulder, elbow and sports) I can tell you that most of us are pushing hard for a Fellowship Match. For those of you attending the AAOS meeting this week, there is a Symposium in San Francisco on this very topic.

That being said, here's what I can tell you about a Spine Match this year (and I'm interested for the obvious reasons as well as that 4 of our 6 PG-3 residents (!!!) are going into spine).

The majority of the "usual suspects" are planning on participating in a match and are cautiously optimistic that it will be used. I know this includes Wash U, Emory, Pitt, Jefferson, Rush, UCSF, and UCSD to name a few. You should all check with the programs in which you're interested to confirm that they are indeed planning on participating in the match. The interviews will all be held in the several month window as mentioned and then a match will be conducted with binding results.

It's an important first step and hopefully Spine can get it to work as well as Hand and Shoulder/Elbow to improve the playing field for all the resident applicants out there.

hope this information helps -

wnl

[High_Tourniquet]

any updates on this topic from the academy?
Is there more or less of a consensus on the match?
Are applicants and programs forced to interview in sept/oct?