It\u2019s both an ending and a beginning: Match Day \u2014 when soon-to-be doctors find out where they will go for their residencies.<\/p>\n
Moments before noon on March 18, 2022, three fourth-year medical students count down the seconds along with their classmates. They\u2019ve known for four days that they\u2019ve been paired with a program, but they are about to learn which. Is it their top choice? Where will they be living in just four months?<\/p>\n
Dr. Francine Zeng \u201918 (CLAS), \u201922 MD watches the clock from her home in South Windsor, Connecticut, her sights set on an orthopedic surgery specialty at UConn Health. A dentist\u2019s daughter, Zeng always knew she wanted to enter a medical field \u2014 though, no offense to her father, she just doesn\u2019t love mouths. She discovered orthopedic surgery early in the program, when she had her first clinical and operative experience with an orthopedic surgeon who became a mentor. It was there that she fell in love with the OR.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love how operating works,\u201d Zeng says. \u201cIt is a very intimate, very intense procedure. But what I love about it is that you can actually just go in there and fix the problem that you\u2019ve identified, and hopefully that\u2019s ultimately going to be what makes the patient feel better and helps them reach their goal of achieving their function back.\u201d<\/p>\n
What is Match Day? During the fourth year of med school, students choose a specialty, apply to programs, interview, and rank their top choices. The programs rank their favorites, too, and an algorithm decides who goes where.<\/p>\n
Fifty-some miles south, at home in West Haven, Dr. Nurudeen \u201cLucky\u201d Osumah \u201921 MBA, \u201922 MD waits with his family by his side, hoping that he will be able to pursue emergency medicine at UConn Health. Osumah\u2019s path to the white coat has been untraditional \u2014 he took a year off from medical school to earn an MBA from UConn after attending a medical conference during his third year.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were talking about quality assurance metrics or something, and all I remember is how the back-and-forth between the doctors and the admins was going,\u201d he recalls. \u201cThey both wanted the best for the patient, but both had different ways to go about it, and it created conflict.\u201d<\/p>\n
Osumah decided he wanted to learn how to bridge that gap between health care administrators and health care providers so that, somewhere down the line, he can sit at that crossroads and play the role of mediator, understanding where both sides are coming from and reaching a shared goal: better health care for the patients they all serve.<\/p>\n
Dr. Jessica Mary \u201918 (CLAS), \u201922 MD, wants to stay at UConn, too, to practice internal medicine. She\u2019s anxiously waiting to learn whether she\u2019ll be signing the lease papers for a new apartment in New Britain later that afternoon \u2014 she\u2019s been pushing off the landlord until she knows for sure where she\u2019s matched.<\/p>\n
The daughter of chemists, Mary grew up steeped in science but always knew she was more drawn to the human side than the lab bench.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know that I\u2019m a much more cerebral person, and I wanted to do something that was more thought-based than procedure-based,\u201d she says. \u201cWhat I really love about internal medicine is that you do get to think about the body as a whole. You get to think about how everything interplays.\u201d<\/p>\n
As an undergraduate Mary enrolled in UConn\u2019s Special Program in Medicine, a four-year pre-med track, but it was a trip to the Dominican Republic with a pre-medical society \u2014 shadowing physicians in hospitals and contributing to medical care in a rural community on the island country \u2014 that cemented her desire to become a doctor.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had looked at different parts of health care, thought maybe nursing for a while,\u201d she says, \u201cbut after that, I was totally sold on it. Yes, this is definitely what I want to do, and I knew I wanted to do it at UConn.\u201d<\/p>\n
At 12 p.m., each of the three students checks for the email that will reveal their fate.<\/p>\n