Married to Medicine: Part One – The Fellowship Match

Married to Medicine: Part One - The Fellowship Match

Miranda Schroeder Blog | Home, Small Business, Life & Love

https://mirandaschroeder.com/

If you have been hanging around here for awhile, you probably know that my husband, Andrew, is a physician. To give you a little back story, we actually met when he was in medical school, and at the time, he was married, and I was engaged. That said, I did not experience being the wife of a medical student (no complaints there). I also didn’t experience what it was like to go through residency “match.” More on what a “match” is later.

However, I’ve been with Andrew since he started his family medicine residency, and we are in year three out of three and so excited for what is to come! Traditionally, a doctor goes to undergrad and then medical school. After medical school, they complete a 3-5 year residency which is required for licensure. The length of the residency depends on the type of physician and their area of focus.

Most physicians entertain full-time job offers during their last year or two of residency, but you can choose to continue training and pursue a sub-specialty after residency through a fellowship. This is what my husband wants to do, so our current step in this insane process is interviewing for fellowships in sports medicine.

The process for applying, interviewing and landing a fellowship is nothing like a “normal” job. All of the future fellows submit their applications into a software. They can choose where they would like to apply. We applied to over 30 programs! The programs review their applications and then schedule interviews with approximately 10-20 candidates. Most programs only have one or two fellowship spots available.

This is where the process gets interesting… Normally, if you have a good interview, they might call you back for a second and then offer you the job. Fellowship doesn’t work like that. Instead, the candidates go through a match process. After a few months of interviewing, the interview window closes. The candidates rank their favorite programs from 1 – however many they decide to rank (the more you rank, the likelier you are to land a fellowship). Meanwhile, the programs rank their interviewees in the same exact fashion. These rank lists get uploaded into a software and the software spits out a match.

Thankfully, Andrew has received a generous number of interviews & that has us feeling hopeful! He’s already interviewed for a few and has many more interviews to go. It’s been exhausting for us trying to squeeze in these super short trips for half a day interviews, but this is a HUGE step towards our future, so we both want to invest time in the process.

Married to Medicine: Part One - The Fellowship Match

Miranda Schroeder Blog | Home, Small Business, Life & Love

https://mirandaschroeder.com/

On January 8th, 2020, we will find out if we match. Andrew may get into a program or he may not. We honestly have no idea, and to me, that is the most stressful part of all of this! I want to know where we are going and when, but until that date, it’s completely up in the air. We could end up anywhere we rank and those locations are all across the country!

More Relationship Blog Posts:

I’m very excited for the spring and to see where we end up. I’m ready for a change & this is going to be a major one. With that excitement comes a lot of stress, anxiety and overwhelm. I’m a logistics person. A planner. I want to know who, what, when and where and I want to know it NOW (It’s also no surprise I lack patience). I’m going to keep you guys updated through this little “Married to Medicine” series! Love having ya’ll along for the ride!

Photography: Chelsea Lousie Photography, Muskegon, MI