Soon-to-be NYU Long Island School of Medicine graduate Mustapha Touray, surrounded by family members who emigrated here from Gambia, is the first in his family to receive an advanced degree. He matched for internal medicine—preliminary and neurology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine.
Photo: Juliana Thomas
Finding out where they will fulfill their medical residencies can be a wait and wonder experience for aspiring physicians. But on Match Day, students at took part in the nationwide ceremony where future doctors learn the location of their residency.
The 25-member Class of 2023 will be the second graduating class from the Mineola medical school, which recently received full accreditation by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education. The school is the only one in the country to offer for a focused on training primary care physicians.
“We are extremely proud of our new doctors because they will be helping to alleviate the shortage of primary care physicians that is taking place not only here in the New York metro area, but nationwide,” said , dean of NYU Long Island School of Medicine.
Each year, residency matches are made through a mutual selection process run by the National Resident Matching Program, in which students and residency programs rank their preferences. A computer generates matches among more than 38,000 residency positions nationwide by using an algorithm so complex that its developers were awarded a Nobel Prize.
This year’s celebration on March 17 coincided with St. Patrick’s Day, a day associated with finding good fortune. At 12:00PM, the students opened their envelopes to reveal their residency matches. They will begin training as residents soon after the school’s graduation in May.
The rite of passage represents a major stepping stone for graduating students, some of whom have changed careers to become doctors. Lauren Jansma was a nurse for six years in Colorado before enrolling at NYU Long Island School of Medicine. She not only got married, but had two children and managed to juggle family life while attending medical school.
Fellow classmates Jaydee Champoo and Maxwell Oberlander are former teachers turned doctors. Champoo, an award-winning special education teacher in California, will be pursuing a career in pediatric psychiatry. Oberlander, who taught for Teach for America in Minneapolis, will be specializing in obstetrics and gynecology.
For Santiago Luis, matching with ٺƵ Hospital—Long Island is a dream come true. The former lecturer in microbiology will be doing his in a familiar place—the hospital just around the corner from the medical school.
While NYU Long Island School of Medicine students can be matched with any residency position nationwide, the school is pleased to announce that 40 percent of students matched with ٺƵ locations, and another 32 percent matched with other institutions in the broader New York region. In this year’s graduating class, 56 percent of the students have selected residencies among the following primary care disciplines: family medicine, internal medicine, pediatrics, and obstetrics and gynecology, helping to relieve that nationwide shortage of physicians in these fields of medicine.
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Rosemary Gomez
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