Med students’ hard work pays off on Match Day

UNMC College of Medicine Dean Bradley Britigan, MD, called it “one of the largest St. Patrick’s Day celebrations in Omaha.”

A total of 114 senior medical students at UNMC learned about their residency assignments March 17 during an event at the Scott Conference Center at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

Turning serious, Dr. Britigan noted that it had been a long path for the Class of 2023.

“The pandemic has made it even more challenging for you,” he said. “All of you are going to have great success in the specialties you are going to be pursuing. We congratulate you on that and look forward to celebrating with you.”

When the students opened their envelopes at 11 a.m., gasps and laughter rang out across the room. Students leapt to their feet to hug loved ones, give high fives and otherwise celebrate the next step in their medical careers. Then, each student and their loved ones took to the stage to tell the rest of the class and college of medicine faculty where they had matched.

See photos from Match Day through the lens of UNMC’s Kent Sievers. Then watch UNMC Today this week for a video from the event by UNMC’s Rich Watson.

Susan Greni, who matched in neurosurgery at UNMC, brought her family onstage with her to reveal her match. She said her two children were hoping to stay in Nebraska. “This is a great outcome for us – I was surprised, happy and excited.”

Ben McIntire, a former Lutheran pastor, said he had been interested in medicine when he was in high school, but he explored various paths before deciding medicine was the best career for him.

Counseling his parishioners solidified his decision.

“Being around parishioners going through health problems, visiting people in the hospital, I realized I wanted to do medicine,” he said. “When I left my church, I told my bishop I was not leaving ministry but just doing a new kind of ministry, and he was really understanding of that.”

McIntire matched at UNMC as well, in emergency medicine.

The 2023 Main Residency Match® — referred to as Match Day — is an annual rite of passage for medical students, a day when students across the country learn where they will train for the next three to seven years, depending on the medical area of their choice. Students are matched through a computer program to align their preferences for residency programs in order to fill the thousands of training positions available at U.S. teaching hospitals.

A total of 38% of UNMC students are staying in Nebraska for their training, and 50% matched in primary care, which includes family medicine, internal medicine, internal medicine/geriatrics, internal medicine/pediatrics, pediatrics and obstetrics/gynecology.  

Nationally there were 40,375 residency positions, the largest number on record.