The Match Game: More than 100 OHSU medical students to learn residency assignments Friday, March 18

Education
Shabnam Ghazizadeh
Shabnam Ghazizadeh

MEDIA ALERT

WHAT:  

2016 Match Ceremony at Oregon Health & Science University.

Media are invited to:

WHEN:  

Friday, March 18, 2016, from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. 
Match Day reveals begin at 9 a.m.

WHERE:  

OHSU Biomedical Information Communication Center 
3181 S.W. Sam Jackson Park Road, Portland, OR 97239 (map)

DETAILS:  

Match Day is a highly anticipated annual event in which the results from the National Resident Matching Program are released simultaneously to thousands of medical students across the country.

Fourth-year medical students in the OHSU School of Medicine will learn where they have been “matched” for their residency training for the next three to seven years of their lives. This group of future physicians will play an integral role in the evolving health care delivery system in Oregon and across the nation.

Medical students’ destinations are determined by a sophisticated computer algorithm that matches students to graduate medical education, or residency, programs based on their application, interview and program preferences, as well as the student preferences of the residency program to which they’ve applied.

Through this tried-and-true system, more than 78 percent of medical students are accepted to one of their top three choices, and 51.6 percent are matched to their first choice, according to the National Resident Matching Program.

"Match Day is a defining moment in every physician’s journey,” said Mark Richardson, M.D., M.B.A., dean, OHSU School of Medicine. "The faculty of OHSU are proud to share this experience with our students as they prepare for the next phase of their professional careers.”

“Congratulations to the class of 2016 as they move into the next phase of their medical careers,” said George Mejicano, M.D., M.S., senior associate dean for education in the OHSU School of Medicine. “Wherever our new physicians go next, we are confident that their OHSU education has prepared them to positively impact the health and well-being of their patients.”

Following are profiles of three OHSU School of Medicine students participating in this year’s Match Day ceremony:

Shabnam Ghazizadeh, 27
Despite growing up in a family of engineers, everyone thought Portland native Shabnam Ghazizadeh would become a pediatrician due to her love of children and idolization of her family doctor. Instead, she pursued a degree in biomedical engineering at University of California Irvine.

It wasn’t until her enrollment in the OHSU School of Medicine M.D. program that Shabnam surprised everyone, most of all herself, by falling in love with the field of otolaryngology: “I knew I wanted a career that would blend technology and innovation, hands-on medicine and continuity of care. Something where I could build relationships with my patients but also have work-life balance.”

While at OHSU, Shabnam completed a back-to-back family medicine and rural rotation in John Day, Oregon. Here, under the guidance of her attending physician, she received extra time with ear, nose and throat patients and experienced everything from late-night calls and the ER, to teaching community health education seminars with local seniors.

Shabnam looks forward to the next step in her career. “The window between Match Day and the start of residency is a gift,” she said. “You know where you are going, but there’s a pause before the new responsibilities come.” After Match Day, Shabnam plans to visit her grandparents in Tehran, where she will get the opportunity to shadow physicians in both a community clinic and a hospital associated with the University of Tehran. In the future, she would happily return to Portland to work at OHSU.

Mari Nomura, 33
For Mari Nomura, the journey to medicine wasn’t straightforward. Although the Portland native had considered medicine as a career, she wanted to first test other interests. A degree in psychology from Rice University led her to an advertising job with Google.

Four years into her corporate endeavor, Mari realized her path lacked passion. With that, she leapt at a chance to join a medical research team in Zambia where she helped collect and analyze maternal health data. “I thought about the risk and reward of such a big life change,” she said. “I realized what could be learned was greater than what could go wrong.”

After returning from Zambia, Mari began pre-medicine classes at Portland State University and worked as a research assistant at OHSU. Once accepted to the OHSU School of Medicine, Mari explored careers in family and internal medicine before landing on emergency medicine. “I like working with the wide variety of people who walk through the doors of the ER, making a quick connection and being the person to provide answers and reassurance in a crisis,” she said.

One of Mari’s medical school highlights was a clinical experience in Enterprise, Oregon, where she realized the importance of community. Around town, she was routinely recognized as “the OHSU student,” and even spent Thanksgiving with an attending physician, volunteered with an after-school group and lived with family medicine residents.

Mari looks forward to taking on the responsibilities and challenges of residency. But before that, she plans to travel with her medical school classmates before they each move on to their separate paths in June.

Alina Satterfield, 28
Hailing from a family of Portland-area physicians, Alina Satterfield felt the call of medicine early in life. At age 10, she had already begun to read her parents’ medical journals, but she also was an accomplished musician, and this passion led to a degree in classical clarinet from Vanderbilt University. Yet, the drive to practice medicine remained strong. “I never stopped wanting to take care of people, and I never saw myself doing that in any field other than primary care,” she said.

Prior to medical school, Alina worked a variety of health care jobs and gained insight into the administrative side of medicine. Although she didn’t plan to study in Portland, her devotion to primary care, coupled with OHSU’s nationally recognized program were the perfect fit. “I quickly realized that OHSU was the place I needed to be,” she said.

Alina is excited to begin her career as a physician during the era of health care transformation: “This is a challenging and exciting time to enter family medicine given the enormous changes in our country's health care system.” After Match Day, Alina plans to travel and brush up on her Spanish. She hopes to practice family medicine in Oregon with a strong emphasis on underserved communities.

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