Across the country at the exact same time — 9 AM in California — on the third Friday in March, graduating medical students assemble for Match Day, the day they receive their assignments to residencies.
It's a spectacle — a cross between a graduation celebration replete with champagne and balloons and a theater audition with tears and heartbreak. The Stanford students, no surprise, are top-notch, so there were more grins than groans and plenty of congratulations and good cheer for all.
The stats themselves stand out: 77 students were matched Friday and they're heading to 14 states, with California and Massachusetts leading the list. (A map showing where everyone is headed is below.) General medicine is the most popular specialty, followed by anesthesia, neurosurgery and pediatrics. No Stanford students were matched in urology, radiology and psychiatry.
Before the event, I checked in with two graduating students, Mia Kanak and Rowza Tur Rumma. Both are accomplished health professionals with interesting backgrounds and plans to make the world a better place. Kanak is a Tokyo native who hopes to help impoverished children. Rumma wants to translate the success of the world's best operating rooms into practices that work in the poorest nations.
As I wrote in a story:
For [Rumma], the day was both exciting and nerve-wracking. “I think it’s hard to not have the jambalaya of those issues in our minds,” she said. Clutching the red envelope and a cell phone, she was dialing repeatedly, trying to get in touch with her parents in Bangladesh to share the moment with them.
Finally, her father on the phone, Rumma slit open the envelope, a relieved grin spreading across her face. “It’s Brigham,” she said, her first choice. Brigham and Women’s Hospital offers opportunities for its surgical residents to specialize in global health, just the program Tur Rumma was hoping for. For the residency, she was interviewed by Atul Gawande, the well-known author and surgeon, and was able to discuss her work during a summer program in Bangladesh, where she worked to implement — and adapt — a checklist of steps to reduce surgical complications adopted by the World Health Organization.
Kanak also secured her first choice, a berth in the Boston Children's Hospital's pediatrics program.
“I want to say how proud all of us at Stanford Medicine are of your accomplishments today,” Dean Lloyd Minor, MD, told the group after envelopes had been torn open. “And now, on behalf of everyone, a toast to your success, to the impact you’re going to have on the lives of so many people moving forward: Best wishes!”
View Stanford Residency Match Day 2015 in a full screen map
Previously: Stanford Medicine’s Match Day, in pictures, It's Match Day: Good luck, medical students!, At Match Day 2014, Stanford med students take first steps as residents and Image of the Week: Match Day 2012
Photo of Rowza Tur Rumma by Norbert von der Groeben; map by Kris Newby
