Topics
Health and Medicine
Date March 18, 2016
Media Contact
David Orenstein
[email protected]
401-863-2476
All News

Medical students learn where they'll be residents

At exactly noon, a record number of Alpert Medical School students learned where they will start their medical careers. Brown University's festive Match Day event, like those held at medical schools across the country, reveals where graduating MDs will serve as medical residents.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — More Alpert Medical School students than ever – a total of 113 – learned at precisely noon on March 18 where they will first serve as physicians. After graduation in May the new crop of Brown University MDs will go on to launch their medical careers as residents in hospitals coast to coast.

Of the record-breaking class, at least 10 will stay within the Brown University fold with residencies at affiliated hospitals in Rhode Island. Another 38 are sticking around New England in Boston, New Haven, and elsewhere.

Among those is Jason Bowman, who grew up in North Kingstown, R.I. He was elated to open his red envelope and learn that he had matched to an emergency medicine residency at Massachusetts General Hospital in the Harvard Medical School system. The match was his first choice and his mother and brother were there in the jam-packed lobby of the medical school building to celebrate with him.

As balloons that had dropped en masse from the ceiling popped all around him, Bowman confessed to having been a little bit nervous going into the day. First choice matches are never guaranteed. But he went in optimistic, and came out thrilled.

“It’s kind of surreal,” he said. “I’m really grateful. Brown medical school is an incredible place to learn. Their advising is top notch. I think all of us felt like, going into it, we had the best advising you possibly could and we were as well prepared as we could be. It’s an incredible feeling.”

Students matched to a wide variety of programs. Most are headed for academic medical centers, though a couple will serve in military hospitals. Just about every medical discipline is represented as well, with students heading for residencies in psychiatry, surgery, urology, ophthalmology, radiology and other specialties. A total of 34 students matched in programs for internal medicine or family medicine, which often lead to careers in primary care.

The students won’t officially be doctors until Brown’s commencement May 29, but now they know where their immediate future will take them.