A Father’s Letter to His Graduating Daughter

On March 15th, 16,390 American medical school seniors successfully matched to first-year residency positions in the National Resident Matching Program.1 The more than 40,000 registrants made it the largest resident match in the program’s history. In many ways, these first-year residents will be facing a rapidly changing health care world, probably with much more uncertainty than when I graduated from medical school in 1973, and possibly even more than when my father graduated in 1944. My daughter, Julie, is one of these medical school graduates. The following is a letter I wrote to her to provide encouragement and some direction as she goes forth into uncharted waters. I’m presenting it here in The Permanente Journal with the hope that a few of her 16,000 classmates might benefit from the advice. — Lee D Jacobs, MD, Associate Editor-in-Chief