Attracting top residency candidates: a survey of important program attributes

Emergency medicine (EM) residents work intimately with emergency department staff, and many residents become staff at the institutions that train them. As such, it is in the interest of all training sites to attract the strongest candidates to their programs. The goal of this study was to determine what factors make programs most appealing to EM residency applicants.

A survey was developed to assess the relative importance of 20 factors used by EM residency applicants in selecting a Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada residency program. The survey was piloted on 17 University of Western Ontario EM residency candidates in 2003, and validated on 26 EM residency candidates applying to 8 sites across Canada in 2004.

The 20 surveyed factors fell into 4 categories. The most important factors were those relating to interactions with the program (4.5 out of 5), followed by factors relating to the program itself (3.5), personal factors (3.4), and lastly, factors relating to the city/province (2.9).

These data suggest that the most important factors are "interactions with a program" and program characteristics. Both of these are largely within a program's control. By striving to make their curriculum, interview days and medical student electives more appealing a residency program can improve its ability to attract the strongest residency candidates.