Match Day determines future careers as doctors for graduating med students
Diana Badillo was one of many students “matched” to residency programs nationwide on March 19.
Tara Ramachandra cries with joy upon learning that she was assigned a residency in otolaryngology at Vanderbilt.
BY TRACIE WHITE
Diana Badillo shrugged off her scrubs for a day, put on black heels, added a touch of mascara and at 10 a.m. March 19 stood in the Dean's Courtyard with her classmates, gripping the white envelope that held her future.
Hands trembling, taking deep breaths, she paused for just a moment. "Finally I'm becoming what I've worked toward for so long," said Badillo, 30, from Brooklyn. "A family doctor."
At exactly the same time as thousands of other medical students across the country, Badillo and her soon-to-be graduating classmates gathered for the official Match Day ceremony to find out where they'd be spending the next three to seven years of their lives as medical residents in training.
"My heart is kind of racing," said Adeoti Oshinowo, 29, of Chicago, placing her hand on her heart at exactly 9:45 a.m. hoping for a residency in ob/gyn. "Fifteen minutes and counting."
"How can you not be nervous," asked medical student Cheri Blauwet, a Paralympian and future physical rehabilitation doctor. "Your life for years is in that envelope."
Often referred to as the "NFL draft" for medical students, most of the 82 Stanford medical students gathered with friends and family, co-workers and instructors, in the annual Match Day celebration that occurs every year on the third Thursday of March. It's a nerve-wracking affair, with residency assignments determined by a nonprofit organization, the National Resident Matching Program, using a computer algorithm to align the choices of applicants with those of the residency programs.
"This is one of those exciting moments where you share a commonality with your colleagues across the country and around the world," Philip Pizzo, MD, dean of the School of Medicine, told the excited crowd.
Then the handing out of the envelopes began.
Badillo had been nervous about this moment for months. Well, maybe for years. The matching process began last year, when students interviewed with residency programs around the country before creating their ranked list of choices. At the same time, the admissions directors at the residency programs wrote up their own ranked lists. Then it was up to the National Resident Matching Program to decide what name would appear on the letter in the white envelope.
For Badillo, like all the students, it was a culmination of years of work. She had traveled from New York to Stanford five years ago with the goal of eventually returning home. On the morning of the match ceremony, she was ready to go back as a family doctor to treat the medically underserved of New York—the homeless, the uninsured, the Puerto Rican community where she grew up, a bilingual Latina translating for her grandparents as they navigated the complexities of the health-care system.
During the four years prior to coming to Stanford, Badillo had worked as a physician's assistant at a medical clinic in the largest men's homeless shelter in New York City, located on an island in the middle of the East River near Harlem. She treated diabetic crack addicts, IV drug users with AIDS, mentally ill men with foot ulcers and hypertension. She fell in love with the work.
"Every Monday morning, I would come in and men would be lined up 20 feet down the hall," she said. "The population was so marginalized and discriminated against. The health-care workers were so dedicated." She loved the work, but she also knew she wanted to be better at it. So she applied to medical school. "These populations often receive sub-optimal care," she said. "I want to provide the best care I can."
Badillo's first choice for a residency match was Columbia University where she could work again in her spare time at the homeless clinic and get her family practice training working with a large Latino population. As the screams and hugs and shouts from her fellow students began to erupt around her, Badillo finally opened her letter.
"I'm going home!" she said, staring at the words "Columbia University" typed on the letter. "I'm going to be the first physician in my family ever, way, way, all the way back. I've got to go call my family."
Other students hugged each other, threw heads back and laughed. "I got Stanford!" said Beau Briese, a medical student who had taken time off to write speeches for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. He turned 30 the same day he found out he matched with emergency medicine at Stanford. "I got my first choice! Whooo, oooo. I'm so blessed. It's been a great ride."
Across the crowd Blauwet found out she was headed to a residency program in rehabilitation medicine in Boston, and Oshinowo will be training in ob/gyn in Michigan.
Badillo was off in a corner, calling her family to tell them she was returning home to complete the work that she had begun years ago. "This is what I was meant to do," she said, thrilled.
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