A tracking study of U. S. medical school graduates from the first to the second postdoctoral year

The types of activities of U.S. medical school graduates of 1977 in their second postdoctoral year have been determined. Ninety-five percent entered a second year of residency training. Three-quarters of them remained in the same program for both years, and an additional 10 percent remained in the same medical-school-teaching hospital network. Only four percent would appear to have been uncertain as to choice of specialty as senior students. Increased interdepartmental cooperation between directors of programs in internal medicine and general surgery and those in the advanced specialties could decrease the residual discontinuity between the first and second graduate years. The National Resident Matching Program is prepared to modify its program to facilitate residency matching. Tracking of graduates provides a more nearly accurate method of predicting physician output than enumeration of first-year residents.