WORCESTER The group of University of Massachusetts Medical School students who gathered late yesterday was as varied as the paths before them. The students will not graduate until June, but yesterday was Match Day, the day they learn where they will do their residency.

Students at medical schools across the country opened their envelopes at the same time. At UMass, the group of 116 students included a couple who will marry today, a veteran who plans to return to combat zones as a doctor and a man who left his home in Sudan at age 11 as one of the Lost Boys.

Timothy J. Menz, who is originally from Braintree, and Tania Visnaskas, originally from Chelmsford, are making a weekend of matches. The two met in fall 2007, their first year of medical school, became friends and dated.

He proposed on Valentines Day in 2011 and yesterday she jumped into his arms as they learned they were both bound for Brown University-affiliated hospitals, he to Rhode Island Hospital in Providence for pediatrics and she to Memorial Hospital in Pawtucket for family medicine.

Today, the couple will get married in Haverhill.

It was like two months after we started dating that I said I would marry him tomorrow, Ms. Visnaskas said. Tomorrow took about three years.

Theyre planning a New Hampshire getaway after the wedding, followed by a trip to Disneyworld in a couple of months, because we didnt think it was legal for a pediatrician not to have gone to Disney World, Mr. Menz joked.

Elsewhere in the crowded lobby yesterday, Micah B. Blais of Holden was celebrating his acceptance into a residency at Harvard University-affiliated hospitals to start his career in orthopedic surgery. Mr. Blais, 32, studied information systems while at West Point, but after two tours of duty with the Army in Iraq, which he concluded as a captain, he decided to pursue medicine.

While deployed, he saw the relationship the doctors were able to maintain with the soldiers and the Iraqi civilians, he said. In between the tours he started in 2004 and 2007, he took a couple of night courses to qualify for medical school. The military is paying for his medical training, and he plans to work in combat zones.

In the meantime, however, he and his wife, Kim Anderson, are looking forward to the birth of their first child and will move closer to Boston.

Read this article:
Seeing the future

With four years of medical school nearly behind them, more than 200 excited students at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston Medical School found out on Match Day Friday where they will begin the next phase of their medical training.

Match Day is an annual event that occurs simultaneously across the country as students are matched with residencies with the aid of computer technology and the National Resident Matching Program. At UTHealth, students, friends and loved ones gathered Friday morning in Webber Plaza.

This is the moment weve all been waiting for, said Katherine Lusk, president of UTHealth Medical Schools Class of 2012.

The tight-knit class forged friendships during Hurricane Ike, which struck the Gulf Coast right before the students first big exam. Since then, together they have learned what it takes to be physicians dedicated to excellence in patient care.

In the months leading up to Match Day, the students interviewed with residency programs across the country. Anesthesiology, family medicine, internal medicine, pediatrics and general surgery are among some of the most popular areas of medicine that members of UTHealth Medical Schools Class of 2012 have selected for residency training. Many of them would like to stay in Texas for that training.

Our students are truly second to none and always do very well in the match, said Giuseppe N. Colasurdo, M.D., president ad interim of UTHealth and dean of the UTHealth Medical School.

Surrounded by family, friends and faculty, the students open envelopes to reveal the location of their residency. Will it be Houston? Will it be someplace else?

Here are stories from a few of the students who participated in this years match:

Lisa Osterhout, 29, had promising careers as a marketing executive and graphic artist, but she discovered that the volunteer work she was doing on weekends was far more rewarding that her weekdays promoting popular rock bands and creating 3D special effects. She was already contemplating a career move when, in 2004, she suddenly became sick. Two surgeries, encouragement from family and friends and news reports about the Indian Ocean tsunami ultimately led to her decision to become a physician committed to public service. In the summer of 2005, the Pearland native returned to The University of Texas at Austin, where she had previously earned a degree in marketing, to complete her pre-med coursework. Medicine allows me to integrate the creative aspects from my previous work while focusing on service, she said. Since enrolling at the UTHealth Medical School, she has served as executive director at the H.O.M.E.S. Clinic in Houston and founded a sustainable project to improve health in childrens homes in Kenya. She plans to do her graduate medical training in pediatrics.

When Irving Basanez arrived on the UTHealth campus in 2008 at the age of 19, he was the youngest student ever admitted to the Medical School. Basanez - who moved with his family from Veracruz, Mexico when he was 8 years old to live in Pharr, Texas - finished high school in three years and pushed himself to finish college in the same length of time. During his first year of medical school, he became interested in otolaryngology and decided he wanted to do his residency training in the ear, nose and throat (ENT) specialty. He also became interested in global health issues and participated in a number of mission trips, including one to Nigeria where he donated his own blood to save a woman from bleeding to death. Like his fellow classmates who are participating in Match Day, he doesnt yet know the location of his residency, but he does know where he would ultimately like to establish his medical practice. Ive had such great mentors here. I want to pay it forward and encourage and mentor students with an interest in ENT and global health, Basanez said. And I would like to come back and practice in the (Rio Grande) Valley. Now 22, Basanez jokes, Medical school has aged me.

Continue reading here:
Envelope, please: UT Houston med students, future docs across U.S. learn their fate on Match Day

By Patty Ryan, Times Staff Writer Patty RyanTampa Bay Times In Print: Saturday, March 17, 2012

TAMPA Ten years ago, when Dr. Michael Flannery became director of the internal medicine residency program at the University of South Florida's medical school, he made a commitment. Each day, he would say a rosary.

Last summer, he added a new prayer: If there's anything I need to do or to know, tell me.

He had been having premonitions of his own death. His body was beginning to validate them.

Flannery had seen the muscle weakness and spasms in patients. He knew what the symptoms might mean. As he searched for a more hopeful diagnosis, he kept his fears to himself. Then, one day in August, he and his wife learned the worst:

Flannery, 51, who has devoted his life to healing and the making of healers, has a terminal disease for which there is no cure ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease.

He has three children, including a boy just 11. He knows he can't change the course of the disease, which could paralyze him and keep him from breathing on his own. He can only influence the memories that his family will make together until then.

And so, after the diagnosis but before others knew, he told his wife, "Let's go out and celebrate."

This is Michael Flannery. He goes to Biloxi to volunteer after Hurricane Katrina. He opens a free clinic in Pasco County. He gives educational scholarships, six a year ranging from $500 to $1,000, to future doctors, nurses and pharmacists. One is earmarked for hospital janitors who want to go back to school.

Over 21 years, he has trained hundreds of new doctors.

Read the original post:
With ALS, mentor to USF medical residents is now a patient

Every single graduating medical student from Marshall University's Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine has been placed in a residency program. University officials said Friday that's the first time ever 100 percent of the class has matched.

The National Residency Matching Program (NRMP) pairs graduating seniors with graduate medical programs across the country where they will train for the next three to five years.

"For the first time in the history of the School of Medicine, 100 percent of our students have matched in their chosen medical specialties, exceeding the average of 95 percent that we've had for the last five years," said Dr. Marie Veitia, associate dean, student affairs.

In all, 64 seniors learned their residency placements at noon Friday when they and their counterparts nationwide opened envelopes containing their residency decisions.

A little more than 67 percent of graduating seniors will enter fields defined as primary care in West Virginia - family medicine, internal medicine, obstetrics/gynecology, internal medicine/pediatrics, and pediatrics - continuing Marshall's mission of educating physicians for the nation's rural areas. Additionally, about one-third of the class will remain in West Virginia, according to a news release from Marshall University. Of those, 17 will train at Marshall.

"We are delighted that a significant number elected to remain at Marshall while others matched in primary care and highly competitive fields of medicine such as emergency medicine, radiology, and anesthesiology at schools across the country," Veitia said. "Marshall students matched at programs at Duke, University of Virginia, Virginia Commonwealth, Emory and three outstanding programs in California."

View post:
Marshall University medical school reaches 100 percent milestone