Renaissance School of Medicine students celebrate Match Day
As the U.S. faces challenges with health care delivery systems and shortages of physicians will likely continue in the future, the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University continues to produce new crops of physicians for the workforce each year. This year at its annual Match Day, 121 graduating students matched to residency programs around the country, from New York State to 19 other states and Washington, DC. More than one-quarter of these students (26%) matched to residency programs at Stony Brook Medicine.
Match Days are held nationwide each year, a celebratory event when students learn of their residency training assignments. Administered by the National Resident Matching Program, this year more than 40,000 positions were filled — a record for the NRMP’s 70-year history.
“Congratulations to all of you, and remember that things are going to work out regardless of where you have matched to,” said Dr. Peter Igarashi, dean of the RSOM, who waved his own residency notice letter that he received years ago from his Match Day, one which revealed a choice that he did not expect and was not his first choice. “You have accomplished this at a time when a worldwide pandemic was at the center of your medical school training, an impressive feat.”
A majority of the matching students will stay in New York State for their residency training — 59%. Of that portion, 55% will be employed on Long Island, and 45% at Stony Brook Medicine.
The top residency training programs matched to included Anesthesiology (21), Internal Medicine (16), Psychiatry (12), and Emergency Medicine (11). A solid portion of the students (21%) matched to primary care specialties, such as Medicine and Pediatrics. This is an important portion entering primary care fields, as the country faces primary care shortages ranging from 21,000 to 55,000 practitioners over the next decade, according to an Association of American Medical Colleges 2021 report.
In addition to students matching at Stony Brook and other hospitals across New York State such as Montefiore Medical Center, Memorial Sloan Kettering and University of Rochester, they also matched to residencies at nationally recognized institutions such as Tufts Medical Center in Massachusetts, the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, and Johns Hopkins Hospital in Maryland.
