title: Factors used by physical medicine and rehabilitation residency training directors to select their residents.
abstract: A 17-item questionnaire was designed to assess the relative importance of various factors to physical medicine and rehabilitation (PM&R) training directors when ranking PM&R resident applicants during the National Resident Match. The questionnaire was sent to all PM&R residency training directors. The recipients were asked to grade most selection factors based on a numerical scale: 1, unimportant; 2, some importance; 3, important; 4, very important; 5, critical. The specific factors addressed in the questionnaire were: academic criteria, letters of recommendation, individual applicant characteristics and aspects of the interview process. Twelve yes-or-no questions were also designed to determine the weight that residency training directors place on certain academic criteria. A response rate of 88% (66/75) was obtained. The most important academic criteria were grades in a PM&R clerkship in their facility (4.1 +/- 0.8), followed by grades in a PM&R clerkship in another facility (3.6 +/- 0.9). The most important letters of recommendation were from a PM&R faculty member in the respondent's department (4.0 +/- 0.8), followed by the dean's letter (3.7 +/- 1.0) and the PM&R chairman's letter (3.7 +/- 1.0). The three most important applicant characteristics evaluated during the interview were compatibility with the program (4.4 +/- 0.8), the ability to articulate thoughts (4.2 +/- 0.8) and the ability to work with the team (4.2 +/- 0.8). Most program directors used multiple criteria to complete their rank list, but the most important were based upon the interview (4.5 +/- 0.9), letters of recommendation (3.7 +/- 0.9), medical school transcript (3.6 +/- 0.8) and the dean's letter (3.6 +/- 1.1).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
authors.affiliation: Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, UMD-New Jersey Medical School, Newark 07103-2406.
authors.forename: J A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: DeLisa
authors.forename: S S
authors.initials: SS
authors.lastname: Jain
authors.forename: D I
authors.initials: DI
authors.lastname: Campagnolo
mesh_terms: D002982:Clinical Clerkship; D004503:Education, Medical, Graduate; D006801:Humans; D007396:Internship and Residency; D010810:Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine / Q000193:education*; D012046:Rehabilitation / Q000193:education*; D012570:School Admission Criteria; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires