Match Day 2018 Protest / Residency Shortage

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1flvOiHMMs

The last blog gave an overview of the Indivisible Guide for public action.  I described how it could be utilized to bring the residency shortage to the Nation’s attention.  To many of you the idea of demonstrating or picketing might seem ludicrous.  Granted I would have felt the same way before I became aware of the residency shortage.  Yet, the direness of the circumstances of unmatched doctors calls for drastic measures.

 Normally, I am very much an optimist.  However, in this particular situation I have realized the futility of successive re-applications for residency slots.  I have “laid out” the reasons for this futility in many of my prior blogs.  The Nation is short 10,000 residency slots each year.  The demand for a residency given the current supply creates such a skewed application process.  The system will repeatedly favor the highest scoring candidates.  The result is that many fully qualified doctors graduates have to give up on a career in Medicine.

 So here are the specifics of what I plan to arrange for “peaceful activism” in Tampa on Friday, March 16, 2018, Resident Match Day.  I hope you will take these ideas and plans and use them at a Match Day celebration where you live.  You have 180 medical schools from which to choose…

• Explore city permits for protests in my area (none needed if on public sidewalks and not obstructing traffic)
• Contact family, friends and supporters to form a group of activists to “picket” at the USF Match Day party in Tampa, FL on March 16, 2018
• Prepare public relation materials to hand out:  brochures and business cards (download these at my website:  www.NoMatchMD.com)
• Order 25 t-shirts with the NoMatchMD logo on them (doctors wear white coats)
• Create protest posters to carry at the demonstration –

-“What About the Docs Who Don’t Match?”

-“Doctor Blindside”

-“Save Our Doctors!”

-“Discarded Doctors!”

-“Residency Shortage = Doctor Shortage”

-“Create More Residency Slots”

·        Reach out to media contacts, especially those who have written about the residency shortage.  Send them protest specifics and include reference links to this issue and a quote to use for a story.

I am going to make PR materials available for you to download on my website, www.NoMatchMD.com (logo, brochure, business card, poster and sticker template).  Please use them to make your participation more probable.

I hope this will help you too, to get out of your comfort zone and help in the quest to correct the residency shortage.

www.NoMatchMDs.blogspot.com