Wichita 4th-year students learn where they’ll do residency training

A Message from Dean Wilson, KU School of Medicine-Wichita
( http://deansblog.byethost4.com/)


March 17th, 2011

Today’s the most exciting day of medical school – Match Day.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the process, 4^th-year medical students choose their specialty and interview with residency programs. Some even go all over the U.S. The students rank where they want to go, and the residency programs rank who they want. At exactly 11 a.m. CST all across the country, the students find out where they’ll be training and living these next 3 or more years.

Here in Wichita, our students, their families, and friends along with faculty and staff gather in the amphitheater and wait. At exactly 11 a.m. students begin opening their envelopes one at a time. To say the students and their families are excited and nervous is an understatement. Just watching them open their envelopes was sometimes painful as their hands shook so much.

Out of 48 students who matched, 26 chose primary care — family medicine, internal medicine, and pediatrics. Surgery was a hot choice this year with 8 in either orthopaedic or general surgery. Sherri Braksick is going to do neurology at Mayo in Rochester, while Jeffrey Robinson will join her in Pediatrics. Allison Ast wanted to go somewhere warm and ended up in Gainesville, Florida, in Pediatrics. I guess she got her wish.

About a third matched in Wichita, training in a Wichita Center for Graduate Medical Education (WCGME) program. That’s especially important to Kansas since about 65 percent of KU School of Medicine-Wichita graduates from both the school and one of the 13 WCGME residency programs practice in Kansas.

Take a moment to check out the complete list of 4^th-year Wichita students who matched today.

I’m very proud of our students and confident they’ll all be wonderful doctors. Congratulations & Happy St. Patrick’s Day.

This year’s class wore “Kiss me I matched” t-shirts, featuring a complete list of their classmates’ names, in honor of St. Patrick’s Day.