It’s called “Match Day.” For many of us, it sounds inconsequential, maybe even trivial, like “Sadie Hawkins Day.” Trust us when we tell you that, for graduating medical students, the third Friday in March is one of the most consequential days of their lives. It’s the day on which most—though not all—will discover where they are going to spend their residency years.

It’s a rite of passage celebrated annually in medical schools throughout the country. Roughly 42,000 registered applicants from the class of 2016 were in competition for just under 31,000 positions, according to the National Resident Matching Program®. Obviously, some went away disappointed.

(Glenn Eiger, MD, right)

It’s possible for residency programs to be disappointed, too. They might not always get the candidates they want. For Einstein’s Internal Medicine Residency Program, though, it was a very happy day indeed.

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From left: Resident Shannon Tosounian, DO; Glenn Eiger, MD, director, Internal Medicine Residency Program; David Wheeler, MD, chief resident (photo by Wes Hilton)

Glenn Eiger, MD, is associate chairman, Department of Medicine, and director, Internal Medicine Residency Program, at Einstein Medical Center Philadelphia. We recently spoke with him about Einstein’s residency program, the program's particular emphases, and the values that guide it.

Perspectives:  How is Einstein’s internal medicine residency program different? What sets it apart?

Dr. Eiger: Our program is structured in such a way that, each and every day, there are structured educational experiences that are patient-centric. They’re also focused on issues related to our health care system.

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David Wheeler, MD, had been thinking of a career as a pure scientist. With an undergraduate degree in biophysics and a PhD in molecular pharmacology from the University of Pittsburgh, he had been pursuing such weighty research topics as the differences between typical brains and brains afflicted by multiple sclerosis.

At a certain point, he recalls, he decided, “I also wanted something I could feel and touch and see.” With that, he went on to receive a medical degree, also from the University of Pittsburgh. The practice of medicine, he says, “has a real application. It’s not knowledge for knowledge’s sake. You could say I made the transition from mice to men.”

These days, Wheeler, a native of Haddonfield, N.J., is a chief resident in Einstein Healthcare Network’s internal medicine resident program. In deciding on residency at Einstein, he says the program offered a good balance of clinical practice and research. That appealed to him.

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