Click here for Match Day 2015 results.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Zb1MF-qua8

“>

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Zb1MF-qua8

There was a new vibe to this year’s Match Day.

After some 25 years of gathering at Skipper’s Smokehouse in north Tampa, the Morsani College of Medicine Class of 2015 opted to move their Match Day closer to downtown Tampa, finding a celebratory spot along the banks of the Hillsborough River and Tampa’s Riverwalk at Ulele, one of Tampa’s hottest dining destinations.

Larger space was needed to hold the largest matching class in the history of the USF medical school. Students, along with their friends and family, filled the green lawn just outside Ulele’s back door to learn where they would spend the next few years of their medical training as physician residents.

This year is also the first Match Day for the charter group of SELECT students, who spent the past two years in clinical rotations in Allentown, PA. Nine SELECT graduates participated in the Match in Allentown and seven returned to Tampa to open their envelopes at Ulele.

In total, 128 USF senior medical students participated Match Day 2015.

“This is a perfect venue for what is probably most important day of our careers,” said. Charles J. Lockwood, senior vice president for USF Health and dean of the Morsani College of Medicine.

Great friends and supporters of USF, Frank and Carol Morsani.

“I’d like to thank Mr. Gonzmart and his family for their generosity and to acknowledge Carol and Frank Morsani. There is no one more dedicated or committed to our school. This incredible experience will change your life. The next three to seven years will be exciting. It’s really where you become physicians. We do our best to lay the foundation, but the actual super structure, the building itself, that will allow you to be a doctor is going to be set over the next several years of your residency training.”

Joking about the obvious low-key theme of USF’s Match Day tradition, he added, “This is my first match day here. I’ve gone from wearing a suit, which I wanted all of you to do, to wearing your jerseys. We know who’s running the place.”

With that, Dr. Lockwood read the first match: Christopher DeClue, who matched with a specialty of diagnostic radiology at the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine.

Match Day is the annual ritual when senior medical students across the country learn where they will spend their residencies, the next phase in their medical education, which can last from three to seven years depending upon the specialty pursued. They’ve spent the past six months or more interviewing with residency programs and then ranking their picks within the National Residency Match Program (NRMP). Match Day is when students find out which programs chose them.

For most students, this day is a defining moment: they find out where they will launch their careers. And for some, Match Day continues paths of determination.

***

For Kanchi Batra, the upbeat theme of Match Day is a perfect complement to what she experienced during her four years of medical school: continuous exposure to good people and positive experiences. Kanchi entered medical school with an attitude of optimism. As a member of the SELECT program’s charter class – a program founded for students looking for “ways to shape their own educational experiences” – she set out with high hopes. When she was admitted to the program, Kanchi was quoted as saying “I would like to become one of those players in the future who helps the country, the healthcare system, the community, and that one specific patient.”

Such a positive outlook is in her DNA. In her second year, she started Project Happiness, a task force aimed at increasing morale throughout USF Health.

“The idea was to bring together like-minded people and have them work as a team to bring more cheeriness on campus,” she said. “We wanted our peers to know it’s not all about tests and struggles. There is more to life than that.”

One of the group’s efforts included mounting a large poster board in a study area for students to write what they were most thankful for. Another event was a spring-time carnival day with face painting. Called Hump Day Happiness – because it was on Wednesdays – the event is probably the pinnacle project, Kanchi said, since it was so well received by students.

Four years later her expectations for medical school and for SELECT were met, and even exceeded.

“Being the first SELECT class was a life-changing experience,” Kanchi said. “And the administration was so receptive to feedback from us so they could make the program better. My experience was eye opening. The faculty up here (in Allentown) really wanted to make sure we were ready for residency and to work in teams, which is what medicine is all about now.”

Kanchi Batra, a charter student in the USF SELECT MD program, will be doing her residency in internal medicine at Kaiser Permanente San Francisco Medical Center.

For Match Day, Kanchi looked forward to matching in an internal medicine program with hopes of a career in critical care. Her hard work and optimism were rewarded; she matched in internal medicine at Kaiser Permanente San Francisco Medical Center.

***

Seeing gaps that prevent success drives Yasir Abunamous to improve things. Following the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, he and a group of like-minded friends realized that relief organizations needed to recruit younger people into relief efforts.

“Campaigning to put younger people on the frontline of relief projects can inject raw optimism into the effort,” he said.

So with that in mind, he helped start Muslims Without Borders (now United Muslim Relief), a completely student-led – therefore young – relief organization.

And when he saw firsthand in Haiti that the relief efforts didn’t have a strong dental care component, he helped develop a branch of Muslims Without Borders that focuses on dental care, the first American Muslim dental relief group.

That same drive to improve brought Yasir to USF’s SELECT program, a leadership track whose students commit to “positively changing medicine” and to “transform health care and improve the health of communities.”

A perfect fit.

“They took a huge chance on us,” he said. “And we took a chance on a new program that would likely have challenges along the way. But they invested enormous resources in us and the program, and empowered us with a ton of new content and skills. They taught us to enhance our relationships with patients and challenged us to build something new and become true stakeholders. I wouldn’t trade it.”

It was during his two-year time in Lehigh Valley Health Network that his drive to improve presented itself again. Yasir helped design a pilot study to measure the number of homeless people within the LVHN patient population, a number that hadn’t been tracked before but could help better define access to health care and lead to cost savings because of reduced visits to the emergency room. He calls this “a critical data point to better allocate care and resources to this population.”

To improve, again.

SELECT student Yasir Abunamous reads his match in Allentown.

Yasir is hoping to match into a family medicine residency. And he did, at Lehigh Valley Health Network in Allentown, PA. 

***

In addition to having the desire to help care for people, Rachael King found another common thread among many of her classmates: they were from various places in the Caribbean, just like she was. Her family is from Jamaica.

Seeing an opportunity to blend a passion for medicine with a compassion for Caribbean populations, she formed the Caribbean Outreach through Medical Missions Association. The student-run organization takes annual  trips in association with Caribbean Community Association to provide much-needed health care to impoverished areas of the Caribbean.

“Our first goal was to educate fellow students about the people in need of quality medical care throughout the Caribbean,” Rachael said. “Each population is quite different and requires different approaches. There is a different exposure and a different world in each place. Some have a bigger focus on AIDs, others diabetes or hypertension. The key is to do something.”

The effort is one of several proud moments of outreach Rachael has experienced while attending medical school at USF.

Another was when she was on USF’s MD Program Admissions Committee to provide input about potential USF medical students. The process helped validate her own journey, she said.

“It’s really gratifying to help applicants become students,” she said. “I was in that seat once and someone saw something in me beyond scores and grades. I’ve succeeded at USF because the community here has nurtured me.  So I try to look for those same qualities in others who might also succeed.”

Her work at the national level as a member of the Governing Council of the American Medical Association’s Minority Affairs Section is another proud moment. In that role, she helped promote the Doctors Back to School program that encourages physicians to connect with local high schools in low-income areas to expose young students to opportunities for becoming physicians.

Locally, similar efforts are playing out at King’s Kids Academy for Health Sciences for elementary students and Tampa Bay Tech for high schoolers.

“A lot of times, it’s about knowing there’s an option,” Rachael said. “Getting young kids exposed to doctors says to them ‘hey, you can do this, too.’ It empowers kids to set goals and make them aim for success.”

Rachael King will be doing her internal medicine residency at the University of Illinois College of Medicine in Chicago.

So that she can continue to reach populations in need of quality primary care, Rachael vied for a residency slot in internal medicine. She found out March 20 that she’ll be moving to Chicago after graduation to start an internal medicine residency at the University of Illinois College of Medicine.

***

Always an active mentor and tutor to those in need of extra help, Jason Ricciuti took that initiative a step further when he started Tampa Bay Street Medicine (a local chapter of a national effort) to help provide basic medical care to the homeless in Tampa.

“A couple of us students started it as a service learning project,” he said. “We contacted other medical schools that are doing it, worked with our Student Affairs Office for approvals, went to a conference about it, recruited other USF students, got a grant, and started the chapter last April.”

Jason and fellow students worked with local organizations to help identify those in need and also connected with social service professionals and partnered with a group to gain access to a local community center that gave the patients access to some basic needs, such as laundry facilities.

The group of about 10 students hits the streets every other Friday and includes a mix of upperclassmen students who help guide first- and second-year students, as well as one to two supervising faculty physicians or physician assistants. And then they walk.

“We usually are around downtown Tampa and the Tampa Heights areas,” he said. “Over time, people have gotten to know us and expect us when we come around again or are waiting there so we can follow up on their conditions.”

Much of what the team sees are chronic problems, like cough and colds, skin problems, allergies problems, acid reflux. They dole out over-the-counter medications and wound care supplies in addition to health education. And the impact is good: typically, they see about 20 people with medical conditions, even more when you count the ongoing concerns.

Before Jason started medical school and the Tampa Bay Street Medicine, he spent two years with the AmeriCorps’ program City Year tutoring middle and high school students in Rhode Island and in Miami. During his first year of medical school, he also helped found Explorers Mentoring at USF.

“I feel like it’s an obligation to serve,” Jason said. “I certainly benefitted from other people’s support and it made a difference to me. It’s good to help each other and realize you’re not alone. You are where you are because of someone else. You can never forget that.”

Jason Ricciuti and fiance Dr. Asha Balakrishnan, a current USF resident.

For Match Day, Jason chose a residency in obstetrics and gynecology. He matched in ob/gyn at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

***

A sunny day greeted everyone at Ulele, the new Match Day venue. Ulele is named for the daughter of a legendary Native American chief and is located on the site of a former City of Tampa Water Works building, next to the new Water Works Park. The old brick mixed with the newness of neighboring buildings and the Tampa Riverwalk along the Hillsborough River give the event a traditional yet modern urban feel.

Following Dr. Lockwood’s announcement of the first match at noon, Kira Zwygart, MD, associate dean for student affairs for the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine, continued calling student names.

One by one, students came forward to accept an envelope, open it, and read to the crowd of classmates and family where they’re headed.

USF SELECT students matching in Allentown, PA. Photo courtesy of LVHN.

Several couples opened their envelopes at the same time to learn where they would be going, together. One couple represented two medical schools: Katherine Diaz from Texas Tech joined her partner Robert Lorch from MCOM at Ulele to learn they will be doing their residencies at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

The student names were called in random order, a tradition at USF because each student called up drops a dollar bill in a box. The last student called to open his or her Match envelope wins the cash. This year that winning student was Danielle Kamis, who matched in psychiatry at Stanford University.

Danielle Kamis collects her prize — the Match box filled with cash.

Then the crowd of newly matched students gathered together for what might be their last photo as a class. Everyone cheered in unison, thrilled to have matched.

From the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine, 39 students (30%) are staying at USF; 52 (41%) are staying in Florida; and 64 students (50%) chose primary care as their specialty (internal medicine, family medicine, and pediatrics).

Click here for more details about the nationwide Match from the Association of American Medical Colleges. 

Video by Sandra Roa and photos by Eric Younghans, USF Health Office of Communications

Graduating medical students at the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine celebrated the next step in their careers at Match Day Friday – but first they and leading advocates took time out to call for increased support of graduate medical training.

Without increased federal funding for graduate medical training, the nation’s looming physician shortage will get worse, U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor said Friday at USF’s Match Day celebration. With more medical school students and no increase in residency slots, it’s getting harder each year for students to “match” into a residency space.

“Medical schools expect to graduate more students, but the number of available residency training slots will not keep up with this trend unless Congress invests in developing our residency programs to meet the health care needs of our aging population,” U.S. Rep. Castor said. “Giving teaching hospitals the opportunity to grow their training programs makes sense in their mission to provide quality health care and makes economic sense for Florida because doctors tend to remain in the region where they complete their medical training.”

L to R: Dr. Harry van Loveren, interim dean of the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine, with U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor and Alicia Billington, a graduating USF Health medical student, at Match Day 2014.

Just before USF Health’s Match Day celebration began, Rep. Castor (D-FL) announced that she and U.S. Rep. Joe Heck (R-NV) introduced the Creating Access to Residency Education (CARE) Act of 2014 on Friday. The CARE bill aims to create a $25 million CMS grant program that would allow hospitals in states with a low ratio of graduate medical education (GME) training slots – including Florida – to apply for matching funds to support increases in slots.

USF Health leaders and students applauded Rep. Castor’s support of increased funding.

“We congratulate our students for reaching this milestone in their medical careers. On Match Day, we want to celebrate this culmination of their hard work and drive,” said Dr. Harry van Loveren, interim dean of the Morsani College of Medicine. “We’re also mindful today that the path they have traveled is becoming more difficult to navigate. We’re so grateful to have U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor with us today to push to increase federal funding and ensure that future medical students, both here in Florida and across the country, can enjoy this same success.”

Graduating students came to Match Day to learn their fates, finding out at Match Day where they would spend the next several years of their careers. Despite the suspense, students found time to be advocates. They chose to highlight the GME funding crisis on their Match Day T-shirts this year, which read “#save GME” across the back.

Before the Match Day celebration began, Congresswoman Castor announced the introduction of proposed legislation to support more residency training slots. Billington, right, is one of the nation’s leading student advocates for increased graduate medical education funding.

“We decided to do this after realizing, ‘What is the best present you could give to your classmates?’ A residency slot,” said graduating student Alicia Billington, one of the nation’s leading student advocates for increased GME funding.

“We stand in solidarity for your future Match Day,” Billington said Friday to future medical classes at USF. “We’ve got your back.”

Billington, who will graduate with an MD/PhD, learned Friday that she matched in plastic and reconstructive surgery – one of the country’s most competitive specialties – at her top choice, the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine. Billington interned in Washington, D.C., with the American Medical Association and has focused her political efforts on increasing funding for GME.

National medical leaders thanked both Rep. Castor and Billington for their support of increasing funding, saying change is needed to avert a physician shortage that will limit access to health care.

“Match Day is a day of excitement, enthusiasm, and joy for medical students around the country,” said Dr. Darrell G. Kirch, President and CEO of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). “While we celebrate with these students, we also look ahead to the next decade when our nation will face a shortage of more than 90,000 physicians of all types.  This makes increasing federal support for graduate medical education a critical priority. The AAMC applauds the efforts of Rep. Kathy Castor, who is a true champion on GME and physician workforce issues.  And we thank student advocates like USF medical school senior and GME advocacy champion Alicia Billington for their hard work educating their communities about these important issues.”

In recent years, medical school enrollment has increased, while the federal funding that is the main funding source for the nation’s residency programs has remained capped. Last year, 528 medical students did not match – more than double the number of unmatched students the prior year.

“Not every medical student in the United States is going to get a spot this year,” Dr. van Loveren said to the USF Health students assembled for Match Day Friday. “Can you imagine going through all this and no residency training?”

Castor flashes the USF “Go Bulls” sign as Billington, recipient of the first match letter, finds out she’ll be doing a residency in plastic and reconstructive surgery at her first choice — the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine.

Florida has only 19 medical residents per 100,000 state residents, well below the national average of 26.8 residents, according to a 2012 study by the Association of American Medical Colleges. While Florida is the 4^th most populous state, it ranks 42^nd in the number of graduate medical residents per Florida residents.

With 3,898 medical students but only 3,769 residency and fellow positions, Florida also doesn’t have enough slots to go around. That means Florida is a “net exporter” of medical students – many students train here, but must go elsewhere for graduate training. Because so many students stay where they receive graduate training, exporting students means Florida loses future physicians.

That needs to change, Castor said Friday to USF Health’s Match Day crowd.

“It doesn’t take a brain surgeon,” she said, pointing to Dr. van Loveren, “to know we need talented doctors here in the state of Florida.”

Of the 121 USF Health students participating in Match Day, 39 percent will stay in Florida; 30 percent of the class matched at USF Health. Other students scattered across the country, going everywhere from Massachusetts General Hospital to UCLA Medical Center.

Every USF Health Morsani College of Medicine student participating in this year’s Match was matched to a residency slot. On the flip side, the College of Medicine also filled every one of its available residency slots with graduating medical students.

Photos by Eric Younghans, USF Health Communications

New doctors tend to practice in states where they conduct their residency specialty training. Where will this year’s graduating USF Health medical students do their residencies?

Find out Friday, March 21, at 2014 Match Day, when the 125 senior medical students from USF, joined by family and friends, pack into Skipper’s Smokehouse, where the students’ residency assignments will be announced beginning at Noon.

Before the students start unsealing their match letters, U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor will visit USF’s Match Day to give the latest news on her work to improve funding for graduate medical education and help the future physician workforce.   She will be joined at 11:40 a.m. by Dr. Harry van Loveren, interim dean of the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine, and graduating USF medical student Alicia Billington, a leading national student advocate for graduate medical education.

Friday’s ceremony will be broadcast LIVE on streaming video via Facebook, so family and friends worldwide who can’t be there in person can watch the celebration in real time.

WHO:  USF Health Morsani College of Medicine Class of 2014

WHAT:  National Match Day/Media Announcement by U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor

WHEN:  This Friday, March 21, 2014, 11:40 a.m. to 2 p.m.

WHERE: Skipper’s Smokehouse, 910 Skipper Road, Tampa, FL, or view LIVE from your computer, tablet, smartphone at: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/usf-health-live

Here’s a link to the email invitation inviting students’ family and friends to watch the celebration live on Facebook: http://health.usf.edu/nocms/publicaffairs/announcements/match_day2014.htm

CLICK HERE FOR MATCH RESULTS

The students are packed into Skippers’ Smokehouse and buzzing with excitement, impatient for Dr. Steve Specter to pick up the microphone  and call out the first name.

“Maxwell Daniel Miller!”

And with that, Miller heads toward the stage, and toward his future.

This is the moment that Miller – and 106 other students — have been waiting for.

One by one, the members of the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine Class of 2013 will hear their name called. They’ll go up front, and open an envelope that will chart the course of their careers.

What kind of doctor will they be? Where will they practice? Will they stay with family or move far away? Will their dreams come true – or be crushed?

It’s Match Day, an annual ritual unique to graduating medical students. Students across the country rank their specialties and the programs where they would like to study. The programs rank the students. At noon today, USF’s medical students start learning the results.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQThAWsAKcM

“>

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQThAWsAKcM

***

Daniel Matta came to America when he was 13.

By then, he already dreamed of becoming a doctor. When he was six, his new baby brother came down with meningitis.

“If I’m a doctor, I can fix my little brother,” was his six-year-old thought. “So I want to be a doctor.”

His brother’s lingering medical problems – including a misdiagnosis of epilepsy – prompted the family’s move to Tampa from Colombia.  Matta’s brother got better. In Tampa, he and other family members got medical care at the Judeo-Christian Clinic. Matta began volunteering there as an interpreter.

Matta saw two things up close: his own family’s challenges getting access to care with no insurance; and the difference that the clinic’s doctors made in their patients’ lives.

“I liked the interaction between primary care doctors and their patients,” Matta said. “I enjoyed working with the underserved population. I felt like I was helping people.”

Matta went on to college at USF, where he started volunteering at the BRIDGE Clinic. He started as an interpreter, and eventually became the clinic’s manager.  Once he started medical school, he continued his work with BRIDGE, serving this year as co-director.

Matta has also been active in Project World Health, going on annual medical mission trips to the Dominican Republic.

Through it all, he has never swerved from his commitment to primary care. He plans to match in family medicine, hopefully at Bayfront Medical Center, so he could stay close to his family and continue his volunteer work.

“Everybody has said that – ‘You’ll change your mind,’ ‘’ he said. “But this is what I love.”

***

Miller comes up front with his classmates shouting encouragement.

“I’ve never been first at anything before,” he jokes.

He opens the envelope and smiles: emergency medicine, Eastern Virginia Medical School.

It’s on: students are matching at Emory and at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston.

Wake Forest, Boston University. USF, USF, USF.

Some students bring their spouses up to the stage.

Josh Robertson brings his wife, their baby, and his six-year-old niece.

He pumps his fist when he sees his match: Carolinas Medical Center, his first choice.

“This is our adventure,” he says.

***

Amber Pepper has already heard the jokes.

“My whole class has just been waiting for me to be Dr. Pepper,” she said.

But Pepper, who married her college sweetheart a year ago, is okay with having an unusual name. She grew up in Ocala as Amber Nardandrea, and the town was small enough that she always got asked the same question:

Is your father Dr. Nardandrea?

“I would run into his patients, and they would say how grateful they were, how he had taken good care of them and really made a difference in their lives,” she said.

When she was an undergraduate student at the University of Florida, Pepper’s father never pushed her towards medicine. “He wanted me to find my own path,” she said.

But his patients did that job for him.

“I realized following in my father’s footsteps would be…awesome,” she said.

So Pepper set her sights on medical school. Then, just a few months before she was to start at USF, she started having terrible headaches. Her vision blurred. Her parents took her to the emergency room.

Her father came up with the possible diagnosis: idiopathic intracranial hypertension.

Pepper didn’t fit the typical patterns for having sudden high pressure inside her skull. But she had had her wisdom teeth removed just a week before.

The condition threatened to cause permanent damage to her vision. She was sick for weeks, undergoing repeated spinal taps to lower the pressure of cerebrospinal fluid in her head.

During Pepper’s hospital stay, a family friend recited a bit of career wisdom for her: “Patients don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” It was advice that Pepper would hold close. After recovering from the ordeal, she started medical school with a deep sense of purpose.

Her dedication has paid off in stellar grades. Now Pepper, 25, plans to match in internal medicine; she hopes eventually to do a fellowship in allergy and immunology.

The only question is where. Pepper’s husband, Dan, loves his current job in commercial real estate – and only one place in the state has the fellowship program that Pepper wants to do.

That’s why her top choice is to stay right where she is: at USF.

***

For many of the students here, Match Day is one of the biggest days of their lives.

For Kenzo Koike, it’s not even the biggest day of his week.

But then, yesterday Koike and his wife, Janie, welcomed their first child into the world. Janie and their new baby – son James Kazunari Koike – are watching Match Day from USF Health’s live stream on Facebook.

“It’s great to be here and enjoy the celebration,” says Koike.

***

Halfway through medical school, Jessica Goldonowicz’ life turned upside down.

Until then, her life seemed charmed. She had grown up in Brandon, the oldest of two girls. Her parents, both teachers, were devoted to the girls, eventually homeschooling them to make sure they got the best possible education. Goldonowicz even took a human anatomy class her senior year in high school, cementing her interest in medicine.

“I thought, ‘Wow, I’m learning about myself,’ ‘’  she said. “It was an incredible realization of the potential for lifelong learning.”

Goldonowicz went on to the University of Central Florida, majoring in molecular biology and microbiology, before coming to USF for medical school.

There was just one cloud on the family’s horizon. When Goldonowicz was 6, her father was diagnosed with hepatitis C, the result of a long-ago blood transfusion.

“That was when I first became aware of medicine,” she said. “I knew there was something wrong with my dad. I knew he was sick. I didn’t understand, but I wanted to know more.”

Still, Goldonowicz’ father was careful of his health, devoted to healthy living and being there for his family.

Until halfway through her second year of medical school, when he developed a serious blood infection and was hospitalized at Tampa General.

Goldonowicz would go to class each day, then head to Tampa General to spend the evening with her father. She would get home at midnight, get some sleep, repeat. Days blurred together, but she kept going. Her father’s infection puzzled his doctors and resisted treatment even to vancomycin, even though antibiotic sensitivities showed that it was an appropriate medication.

More drugs finally cleared the infection, but their side effects damaged his liver and kidneys. Goldonowicz was juggling classes learning about hepato-renal syndrome and watching her father struggle as his organs began to fail.

As her father became sicker, Goldonowicz called Dr. Steve Specter, associate dean for Student Affairs. She took a leave of absence to stay by her father’s side. Six days later, he died.

“It was tough, but I have received so many blessings,” she said. “The support from Dr. Specter, and my classmates, and our faculty has been unreal.”

Classmates brought her family dinner at the hospital and came to her father’s funeral. Their kindness and empathy has stayed with her.

“We are a family,” she said. “My classmates have been an incredible source of support to me and took care of me when I needed them the most. I will never forget the love I’ve been shown.”

She plans to go into emergency medicine, and give back the kindness she received.

“I’m so much more aware now,” she said. “As a doctor, you can walk into work in the morning and say this is just another day for you – but for your patients, it’s could be the worst day of their lives. Nobody comes to the emergency room for fun. My job is to help make their day a little bit better.”

***

Alexander Wang has been waiting for today for a long time. He knows where he wants to match: New York Methodist Hospital. It has the perfect emergency medicine program that he wants and New York to boot.

So when he opens his envelope, he screams “New York!” And then he rips open his Match Day t-shirt to reveal the emblem on the T-shirt he’s wearing underneath. His classmates roar.

Today, he is Superman.

“I’m just really, really excited for all of us,” Wang says. “We’ve been waiting for several months and it’s great to have that burden lifted off our shoulders.”

***

When Dr. Specter calls Goldonowicz to the stage, she opens her envelope and then covers her mouth in delight.

Her voice breaks as she reads out her first choice: Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte.

Pepper brings her husband Dan up front, so they can see the envelope together: USF, just what she wanted.

“I knew she was going to get it, absolutely,” Dan Pepper says. “She’s a star.”

Matta matches at Bayfront, and then it gets even better: several of his friends have matched their as well. As Match Day comes to a close, there are hugs all around.

Goldonowicz poses for a picture with her mother, Janice, and her little sister, Joanna.  Her mother talks about Jessica’s father, and how proud he would be today.

“He used to tell her, ‘I’ll give you a lot of practice. I’ll be your first patient,’ “ she said. “And in many ways, he was.”

Class of 2013: Staying at USF, 24; Staying in Florida, 45; Number in primary care: 51

– Photos by Eric Younghans, USF Health Communications; video by Allyn DiVito, USF Health Information Systems

Follow @LisaGwrites
//