"It's a Match Mom!"

Megan Lasseter's daughter Kayla reads Mom's match: "Emergency Medicine - USF" as twin brother Connor looks on. It's what the single mom was hoping for -- a residency without uprooting her family. Click box below for Lasseter's experience.

View Video as Windows Media File

March 20, 2008. Across the nation today, senior medical students found out their residency assignments for the next three to seven years. Residency is a key phase in very doctor's career - the time when a licensed medical graduate begins specialized training in their chosen field. At the USF College of Medicine, approximately 115 senior medical students were among the 14,359 nationwide participating in Match Day. The USF students selected Internal Medicine (20 percent), Emergency Medicine (13 percent), and Pediatrics (13 percent) as their top three specialty choices. About half are staying in Florida for their residencies, including 28 percent remaining at USF College of Medicine.

Two USF medical students will enter USF's brand new Orthopaedic Surgery residency program, which attracted four of the top six people on its rank list -- quite a coup for a program participating in its first match.

With emotions running high, a half dozen are couples and waited on 'pins & needles' to learn if Match Day assignments would land them in separate cities or even states. As part of the USF tradition, couples' residency assignments are announced simultaneously. Adding to the adventure of Match Day each year at Skipper's Smokehouse in Tampa, the names are drawn at random. Each student trades a dollar for their Match Day letter and the money pot serves as a consolation prize for the very last student to be 'matched.'

In the months leading up to Match Day, students have applied and interviewed with medical schools around the country. On Match Day, students are officially notified which of those programs has selected them for residency training.

Other Links

- Photo Gallery
- Where USF medical students matched
- National Resident Matching Program statistics

A CLOSER LOOK...
We'd like to introduce you to a group of medical students...their stories and personal journeys give readers a closer look at the Class of 2008.

Megan Lasseter
Megan Lasseter’s 5-year-old twins – Kayla and Connor – were at her side when she opened her Match Day envelope. Daughter Kayla read the results -- "Emergency Medicine at USF!" The twins were 14-months-old when Lasseter, 28, a single mother, entered USF College of Medicine. During the week, she’d rise at 4:30 a.m. to get the toddlers ready for daycare and sneak in some studying before school. After class or clinical rotations, she’d rush back to the campus daycare center to pick up the twins and head home where she’d make dinner, then bathe and play with the children before tucking them into bed. When the little ones were sick, she’d keep up with recorded lectures on the web. At class meetings, she’d bring the twins along in their double stroller, with plenty of toys to keep them occupied. On weekends, the twins’ father, a recent law school graduate who shares custody with Lasseter, took over child care so she could immerse herself in her studies. “There were many nights when I ended up falling asleep on the couch with my textbook open,” she said. “And, I’m sure I had spit-up on some of my papers.”

College of Medicine Dean and USF Health VP Stephen K. Klasko, MD, MBA, turns the microphone toward Megan Lasseter's daughter Kayla.

Lasseter credits the support and understanding of family, classmates and medical school student affairs with helping her through. She will specialize in emergency medicine – a passion she shares with her father, a firefighter/paramedic in West Broward County's city of Miramar. She recalls the excitement of occasionally riding with her father in the ambulance as a child, the compassion and commitment of the emergency room physicians she shadowed at Jackson Memorial Hospital as a high school student, and volunteering in the ER at Shands Hospital while a pre-med student at the University of Florida.

“You’re at the forefront of medicine’s battleground in the emergency room… with the opportunity to help people at their worst moments,” said Lasseter. While she never seriously considered another field, she adds that ER shift work would allow her to spend more time with her twins throughout their elementary and junior high school years. Watching their parents persevere in their professional studies has rubbed off on the twins. “They’ve seen the type of hard work and persistence it takes, and they’re looking forward to starting kindergarten,” Lasseter said. “My daughter wants to be a pony doctor (veterinarian), and my son a train conductor.”

Jason Wilson
Also looking forward to a career in emergency medicine is Jason Wilson, 29, who plans to complete his PhD in anthropology from the University of Michigan while conducting an ER residency. Wilson, president of the Class of 2008, wants to combine the clinical expertise he’ll gain as an emergency physician with his population health background to work in international emergency medicine and health policy.

Wilson at Templo Mayor, an archaeological site of Aztec ruins, in Mexico City.

Wilson is working with physicians from the Pan American Center for Emergency Medicine Development to study the high rate of obstetrical emergencies among Mexico’s indigenous Indian populations in Oxaca and Chiapas. The goal is to help develop and implement standardized programs to train paraprofessionals, the equivalent of U.S. paramedics and midwives, how to recognize and manage obstetrical emergencies. Mexico has an acute shortage of specialty and obstetrical trained physicians, most of whom work in urban areas with hospitals. “But, most high-risk births among women from these remote rural areas occur at home – as much as three hours away from the nearest hospital,” Wilson said. “Postpartum hemorrhage is one of the major causes of maternal death that could be prevented with a training protocol for health workers in the field.”

Wilson comments on the similarity in skills needed by emergency physicians and anthropologists. “The emergency room is a self-contained field site. You interact with patients of every culture, ethnicity and socioeconomic group, and need to be an astute observer and interviewer.”

He recognizes the importance of the “broader perspective” afforded by focusing on social, economic and cultural risk factors impacting the health of communities and populations, without minimizing medicine’s emphasis on improving the health of individual patients. “I love the balance of the two,” Wilson said. “The social science training of anthropology can help you better understand, and hopefully address, the root causes of the problems that lead patients to the hospital or clinic.”

Wilson, COM Class of 2008 president, will remain at USF for a residency in emergency medicine.

Heidi Haun
Heidi Haun, 28, wants to work in a mission hospital in West Africa after completing her residency training in surgery at Mercer University School of Medicine. Before I ever decided I wanted to be a physician, I felt called to be a missionary," said Haun. "There's no better way to serve in missions than to tend to people's physical needs as well as their spiritual needs."

Haun with young patient in Ghana.

This fall, Haun completed a three-month international health elective at Baptist Medical Centre, in Nalerigu, Ghana, with the support of the Southern Baptist Convention's International Mission Board. She went to Ghana with husband, William Haun, who volunteers his time providing computer support to the IMB's West African missionaries, and their son Trey, then 13 months.

Under the supervision of physicians at the 123-bed mission hospital, Haun conducted ward rounds, helped patients in the hospital's outpatient clinics, assisted with minor procedures such as suturing, splinting and debridement, and scrubbed in on more than 75 surgeries, including hernia repairs, C-sections and exploratory laparotomies.

Patients traveled, sometimes for days, to the hospital from their villages by taxi, bus and even on foot. They waited hours in long lines for treatment and to fill prescriptions at the hospital's pharmacy. "A lot of people came with diseases in advanced states. The sheer numbers of patients without adequate health care was striking," Haun said. "They were so appreciative of anything we could do for them."

Haun helped treat malaria, typhoid and other tropical diseases rarely seen in developed countries, and frequently examined snake-bite victims -- some arriving with swollen extremities several days after being bitten. One of her most memorable patients was Lamisi, a young girl with an extensive Buruli skin ulcer, caused by a microbe found in the rain forests of southern Ghana.

Haun brings a smile to Lamisi with the help of 'happy face' stickers.

In addition to antibiotics, patients are treated with frequent debridements of the ulcerated tissue, so Lamisi basically lived at the hospital for two months. Eventually the infection spreading across her chest was halted; she received a successful skin graft and was discharged home. All through the painful wound healing process, Haun recalled, Lamisi kept her sweet smile.

For more on the Hauns' adventures in Africa, including a gallery of the compelling photos William is selling to benefit Baptist Medical Centre, where Heidi worked, go to www.haunsinafrica.com

Heidi Haun with husband William and son Trey

Sam Crane
Sam Crane will be conducting his residency in Family Medicine with a sub specialty in rural and underserved medicine at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland. He joined the Peace Corps, after receiving his master's degree in public health. Working with the Peace Corps, Crane traveled to El Salvador where he focused on improving health care delivery systems for two years. He also traveled to Chiapas Mexico, participating in a project by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Working with a local Shaman in Chiapas, Crane learned to identify healing plants and use that information to encourage the local community to grow “medical gardens”. In addition, Crane helped trained Mayan students to be health education leaders.

Sam Crane, former Peace Corps volunteer, is headed for a family medicine residency at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland.

Here at the University of South Florida, Crane has channeled this Peace Corp passion and experiences into the International Health Service Collaborative (IHSC) which combines students from the collegs of medicine, nursing and public health. Developed first as a steering committee of students that Crane assembled, the Collaborative organizes annual medical missions in the Dominican Republic and Ecuador.

Most notably, the Bridge Healthcare Clinic opened in the winter of 2007 is the brainchild of Crane. The BRIDGE, which stands for Building Relationships and Initiatives Dedicated to Gaining Equality, is the university's first student-run clinic offering free primary care, social services and physical therapy to uninsured adults living in the university area. With Crane at the helm, four USF senior medical students pushed their cause for more than a year, studying models of other student-run free clinics, attending a national conference in New York City, assembling a core group of 30 student volunteers to work in the clinic and securing donations of funding and lab services, as well as negotiating with the Hillsborough County Health Department for the use of one of their clinics once a week.

"Big changes start with little actions," said Dr. Douglas Holt, medical director of the county health department.

"We have a community practically across the street from the medical school that can really use our help," noted Crane. "If someone's blood pressure was high at one of our health screenings, the best we could do before was to send them home with a brochure and provide limited counseling. Now, if they qualify, we can refer them to the BRIDGE clinic."

It is a legacy that other generations of med students at USF will benefit from as well. "We are one of few student-run clinics in the country that brings virtually all the health professions together in one location," said Crane, adding that students are getting the chance to learn, first-hand, how a real clinic operates while giving back to the community.

October 2007 Photo. Left to right: Senior medical students Shelby Kent, Samuel Crane, Waldo Guerrero and Omar Hammad, are founders and directors of the Bridge Healthcare Clinic.

After his training, Crane plans to practice full spectrum medicine, including Obstetrics, while fulfilling his National Health Service Corps commitment by working with a Federally Qualified Health Center or with the Indian Health Service. Always planning ahead, Crane also aspires to a creer in health policy working with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention or the World Health Organization.

Kathlyn Wilde, Michael Armstrong & Jennifer Shippy - NAVY Bound
As most of their classmates woke up on Match Day, not yet aware of where they will be spending their residencies, three USF medical students have known their destinations since December.

Michael Armstrong, Jennifer Shippy and Kathryn Wilde participated in the match through the military and will be conducting their residencies in U.S. Navy medical facilities. The three received their official assignments on Dec. 15, 2007 via e-mail.
Shippy matched in the specialty of Psychiatry at the Naval Medical Center in Portsmouth, VA. Wilde matched in Pediatrics at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. Armstrong matched in General Surgery at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego, California.

Wilde admits " It's not as exciting as Match Day, but it is nice to know our futures early.” Although they already know their matches, the Navy trio planned to participate in the local Match Day festivities with their classmates. “I wouldn’t think of missing that!” said Wilde.

Coverage by Anne DeLotto Baier, Sarah Worth & Lissette Campos, USF Health Communications
Match Day 2008 Photos by Eric Younghans, USF Health Media Center

Video Podcast:
Filmed and Edited by Jean-Rene Rinvil, USF Health Media Center
Edited by Lissette Campos, USF Health Communications
Directed by Klaus Herdocia, USF Health Communications