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Fourteen SELECT (Scholarly Excellence, Leadership Experiences, Collaborative Training) medical students with the University of South Florida (USF) Health Morsani College of Medicine, out of a graduating class of 50 SELECT students, participated today in Lehigh Valley Health Network’s (LVHN) annual Match Day celebration at The Renaissance Allentown Hotel. The SELECT students joined fourth-year medical students across the country in opening sealed envelopes to reveal the name of their “match” – the medical residency assignment that will shape their future careers as physicians. The others in the SELECT program participated in Match Day activities at USF in Tampa, Fla.
Megan Greenberg from Salisbury Township, Pa., matched with Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and will do her residency in internal medicine at Rutgers.
“LVHN is the first hospital I volunteered at when I was 16 years old, so to come back and study to be a doctor was rewarding. I would love to come back as an attending physician one day,” Greenberg says.
Greenberg is the daughter of Marna Greenberg, DO, the first woman to work as an emergency department physician at Lehigh Valley Hospital (LVH)–Cedar Crest. Marna is Vice Chair of the Department of Emergency and Hospital Medicine at LVHN and Research Professor with USF Health Morsani College of Medicine.
Vivek Gorijala from Virginia matched with his first choice, LVHN, and will do his residency in psychiatry.
“I’m thrilled and so happy,” Gorijala says. “It’s a great program filled with great doctors that I’ve enjoyed learning from as a medical student and am looking forward to learning from as a resident.”
Match Day is a much-anticipated national event for graduating medical students. The process: Fourth-year medical students apply to residency programs and attend personal interviews with prospective health organizations. After completing the interview phase, students submit a rank order list (ROL) of their preferred training programs to the National Resident Matching Program. Residency program directors also submit an ROL of their preferred
students. A database aggregates the lists to come up with residency assignments that shape the careers of future medical doctors. The results are binding.
This year’s graduating class of 50 was the largest in the SELECT program’s history, as well as the largest class in the region. The USF/LVHN affiliation creating SELECT was announced in 2009. SELECT offers a medical education curriculum that trains a new generation of 21st century physician leaders. LVHN serves as the northern instructional medical campus of USF Health Morsani College of Medicine. Students attend USF Health Morsani College of Medicine Tampa campus for their first two years of medical school, then transition to LVHN for their last two years. In addition to the 14 medical students who matched in Allentown today, 36 SELECT students chose to match at USF Health in Tampa.
