‘Residency Navigator’: Words of Caution

‘Residency Navigator’: Words of Caution
You may have seen or heard about the ‘residency navigator’ tool that Doximity put together. You might feel assured that the tool carries the stamp of US News & World Report. We understand that choosing a residency program is intimidating and that you are looking for any help or guidance you can find.
However, please understand that Emergency Medicine has serious concerns about how Doximity’s rankings were created. This past Sunday, many EM faculty received an email from the website Doximity.com asking us to rank EM residencies by which we thought “offered the best clinical training.” We understand the goal of wanting to create a “list of the best” but unfortunately there are many problems with this survey.
- There are no objective criteria that define what is meant by “the best.”
- Faculty aren’t qualified to judge what is the best nationally. Most of us have knowledge of at most a few programs.
- Many academic faculty opted out of participating in this survey. In fact, 9 of our national organizations signed a joint letter voicing our concerns about the methodology and the potential implications of this survey.
If you choose to view the results of the survey, we ask that you interpret the results with skepticism and caution. Each residency program has its unique strengths. You should find one that matches your needs and goals. Websites like EMRA Match can help with this, talk with your advisor or check out some of these resources.
- EMRA’s Advising Resources page
- EM Advising Blog
- Many medical schools have advice resources (for example, Western Michigan)
- Also, there are some great podcasts by Nathan Lewis and Scott Wieters on this site.
- Joint Letter to Doximity.com by EM’s national organizations
- 2015 Letter from CDEM to our students regarding the Doximity.com survey