Finding out where they will fulfill their medical residencies can be a wait and wonder experience for aspiring physicians. But on Match Day, students at NYU Long Island School of Medicine (LISOM) took part in the nationwide ceremony where future doctors learn the location of their residency.
The 25 member class of 2023 will be the second graduating class of the Mineola medical school, which recently received full accreditation by the Liaison Committee on Education. The school is the only one in the country to offer a three-year, tuition-free medical degree focused on training primary care physicians.
“We are extremely proud of our new doctors, because they will be helping to alleviate the shortage of primary care physicians that is taking place not only here in the New York metro area, but nationwide,” said Gladys M. Ayala, MD, MPH, Dean of the Long Island School of Medicine.
Each year, residency matches are made through a mutual selection process run by the National Residents Matching Program, in which students and residency programs rank their preferences. A computer generates matches among more than 38,000 residency positions nationwide by using an algorithm so complex that its developers were awarded a Nobel Prize.
This year’s celebration on March 17 coincided with St. Patrick’s Day, a day associated with finding good fortune. At 12:00 pm ET, LISOM students opened their envelopes to reveal their residency matches. They will begin training as residents soon after the school’s graduation in May.
The rite of passage represents a major stepping stone for graduating students, who have changed careers to become doctors. Lauren Jansma was a nurse for six years in Colorado before enrolling at LISOM. She not only got married, but had to two children while managing to juggle family life with attending medical school.
Fellow classmates Jaydee Champoo and Maxwell Oberlander are former teachers turned doctors. Jaydee, an award special ed teacher in California, will be pursuing a career in pediatric psychiatry. Max, who taught for Teach for America in Minneapolis, will be specializing in OB/GYN.
While LISOM students can be matched with any residency position nationwide, the school is pleased to announce that 40 percent of students matched with NYU Langone locations, and another 32 percent matched with additional institutions in the broader New York region. 56 percent of the students in this year’s graduating class have selected residencies among the following primary care disciplines: family medicine, internal medicine, pediatrics, and obstetrics and gynecology, helping to relieve that nationwide shortage of physicians in these fields of medicine.
For Santiago Luis, matching with NYU Langone Hospital-Long Island is a dream come true. The former lecturer in microbiology will be doing his residency in internal medicine in a familiar place -at a hospital just around the corner from the medical school.