The Residency Match in South Dakota: A National Comparison of Specialty and Geographic Trends.

Background: Current estimates suggest progressively increasing need for rural family medicine and primary care providers in the near future. Predominantly rural states such as South Dakota have even greater difficulty in attracting these providers. Since its founding, the Sanford School of Medicine (SSOM) at the University of South Dakota has designed its curriculum to encourage students to choose these specialties and practice within the state upon completing residency. The objective of this paper was to evaluate trends in specialty choice and geographic location of residency programs for SSOM graduates compared with national means.

Methods: A retrospective observational analysis of residency match data including specialty and geographic location of the program was performed for matched seniors of SSOM from the years 2000-2020 and compared to national data over the same period.

Results: The proportions of students matching with primary care, surgical, or medical specialties at SSOM was not significantly different from national means. Proportionally, SSOM had almost twice the national average of students matching into family medicine (17.5 percent vs 9.0 percent). A significantly greater proportion of SSOM graduates matched into general surgery (8.1 percent vs 6.0 percent). SSOM students were significantly more likely (71.5 percent) than national (63.0 percent) and Midwest (58 percent) averages to match within their home region.

Conclusions: SSOM's curriculum has led to a greater proportion of graduates matching with family medicine programs and at the national average for primary care overall. SSOM students are also significantly more likely than the national average to match within the same region of their medical school.