Excited cheers poured out of the UMKC Student Union on Friday, where more than 100 medical students tore open envelopes to discover where they would spend the next few years doing their medical residency training.
The students participated in the National Resident Matching Program, also known as Match Day, when medical students learn what residency program they matched with, as well as the specialty they will practice.
For medical student Divya Jain, it was a long time coming, but very much worth it. Although the Overland Park native is in the six-year B.A./M.D. program at the UMKC School of Medicine, she took a two-year break to get her master’s degree in public policy at Harvard University.
“In the six-year med program, we start preparing for our residency at 18 years old,” Jain said. “It’s been eight years in the making, but matching feels like all the hard work was worth it because we get the privilege of taking care of people.”
Jain matched in a residency program at the University of Washington in Seattle, where she will enter her preferred specialty of OB/GYN. Her rotations at University Health Truman Medical Center instilled in her a passion for improving women’s health. That passion motivated her to also dive deeper into patient advocacy at a systemic level.
“Obviously doctors impact our patients on an individual level, but caring for our patients doesn’t have to stop at the 15-minute visit,” Jain said. “We have so much more potential to make profound changes for our patients’ health through advocacy on a larger level.”
Match Day is a family affair for many students, and that was especially true for Josephine Nwankwo of Oklahoma City, who matched at the Baylor College of Medicine in physical medicine and rehabilitation. She’ll join her sister, Angela Nwankwo (B.A./M.D. ’22), who is also a resident in the same program.
Their mother is a registered nurse, and over the years the family traveled to their mother’s native Nigeria, bringing medications from the United States that weren’t available there. It instilled in Nwankwo a desire to return to Nigeria to bring rehabilitation treatment to the country.
“Visiting my family in Nigeria opened my eyes to the health-care inequities in the world,” Nwankwo said. “I feel like rehabilitation is a resource that’s not really offered in these developing countries. I would love to return to Nigeria because the service could really benefit the people there.”
New School of Medicine Dean Alexander Norbash congratulated the class, while adding some perspective on what was his fifth day leading the school.
“It’s an interesting day, because you began it with a certain mindset, and you’re ending it envisioning yourself in Topeka or San Francisco as a psychiatrist or a cardiac surgeon,” Norbash said. “It’s one of those watershed days you can’t ever forget.”
According to Norbash, more than 50 percent of the students matched into primary care. The class matched in a wide range of specialties, including anesthesiology, emergency medicine, psychiatry, dermatology and several surgical specialties. A third of the students matched in Missouri, with 30 percent of students staying in the Kansas City metropolitan area.
Lauren and Brevin Miller are two of those students who will stay in Kansas City. The married couple, who met in Spanish class their freshman year, were anxiously awaiting their match to see if they would practice in the same city. Both grew up in Missouri. Lauren is from St. Louis and Brevin is from St. Joseph, so the couple had high hopes of staying close to Kansas City.
Gathered in front of nervous family and friends, the couple ripped open their envelopes together and screamed with joy when they read their exciting news. Lauren matched at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City specializing in pediatrics, and Brevin matched at the University of Kansas Health System, specializing in surgical otolaryngology.
“Matching together is everything,” Brevin said. “All our hard work paid off. And our basset hounds get to stay in Kansas City!”
