The first class of Roanoke’s new medical school hit a milestone Friday, one that puts the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine on the medical map.
One by one, the 40 students were called to the front of a crowded auditorium to place markers on a U.S. map, indicating where they will soon be practicing as resident physicians.
Just a half-hour earlier, the students had been handed letters informing them where they had been accepted for residency, the first full-time job a doctor will hold and the next required step of a medical education.
Four years after enrolling as the inaugural class of VTC, the aspiring doctors will graduate in May and then set out for teaching hospitals across the country — from Seattle to Norfolk, from Atlanta to Vermont.
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Eleven of them will perform residencies at Carilion Clinic, fulfilling the school’s mission of producing doctors capable of practicing anywhere, but perhaps inclined to become a more permanent part of the Roanoke community.
Friday’s ceremony at VTC was part of national Match Day, an event held the third Friday of every March when applicants learn whether or not they will be “matched” with their residencies of choice.
This year, 40,394 international applicants vied for 29,671 residency positions in the U.S., meaning the overall match rate was 73 percent, according to the National Resident Matching Program, a private organization that coordinates the process.
This year’s match rate for graduating seniors at U.S. medical schools was 94 percent.
At VTC, every member of the charter class was accepted to a residency program, where they will spend the next three to seven years before they will be allowed to practice on their own.
“The fact that we are a new school, and we have a 100 percent match rate, is just amazing,” VTC Dean Cynda Johnson said.
At the Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine in Blacksburg, all but five of the 178 students seeking matches found them. School officials said positions could become available for the remaining five students.
In recent years, medical schools have been increasing enrollment to deal with a projected shortage of physicians. But federal funding for residency positions has been frozen since 1996.
“We’ve all gotten behind the curve on the number of residency slots, and counter-intuitively, as we anticipate a physician shortage, we’re just not keeping up,” said Mike Jurgensen, senior vice president for health policy at the Medical Society of Virginia.
That can make for more than a little anxiety for medical school seniors, many of whom have spent the past four years cramming their brains with knowledge while amassing six-figure debts from student loans.
Matthew Levine and Annabelle Mangan, who started dating soon after they met during VTC orientation four years ago, had the added challenge of finding residencies in the same place.
“We’re both pretty competitive,” Mangan said, explaining that she and Levine felt even more confident after interviewing with the hospitals they applied to.
“We felt that we had a home someplace, and that we would be happy at most of the places,” Levine said.
“But the most nerve-racking part is that you have no idea of where you will be living and working in two months. And then it’s in an envelope.”
When they opened those envelopes Friday, both Levine and Mangan learned they were matched with their first choices.
He’ll be working at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, specializing in internal medicine. She’ll be at the nearby Duke University Medical Center, with a specialty in anesthesiology.
Wherever they wind up after that, Levine and Mangan will be grateful that they started their professional journey in Roanoke.
Attending a newly established medical school is “a little bit of risk,” Levine said. “But there was a lot of excitement from the faculty and staff, and I just fed off of that vibe.”