National Resident Match Program Celebrates Largest Match in 70-Year History
Colchester, Vt., native and UVM medical alum Emily Eakin, M.D. (right), reacts to news of her match to a surgery residency at Boston University in this 2022 Match Day photo. (Photo: Andy Duback).
Vermont Business Magazine The University of Vermont’s graduating medical students are among a record-breaking 43,000* future physicians participating in the National Resident Matching Program’s (NRMP) 2023 Main Residency Match®, the results of which will be revealed on Match Day on Friday, March 17.
The UVM Larner College of Medicine’s festivities will take place in the Hoehl Gallery in the Health Science Research Facility beginning at about 11:30 am, with match announcements beginning at noon.
(View the Larner Match Day via livestream and link to the Match Day event schedule.)
UVM’s Match Day event was virtual in 2020 and 2021 and took place in-person at UVM’s Davis Center in 2022. This is the first time since 2019 that the event has taken place on-site at the College of Medicine. Features include a bagpiper-led parade of medical students, short remarks, and students opening their Match envelopes and/or announcing their Match results on stage.
(Link to a highlight video of the 2019 Match Day for a glimpse of what the 2023 event will be like.
UVM’s Medical Class of 2023
Medical students in the Class of 2023 were in the middle of the second semester of their first year of medical school when the pandemic shutdown occurred and their learning moved online.
The pandemic “further exposed the cracks in the medical system and how patients can be affected,” says Williston, Vt., native Warren Grunvald, a UVM Class of 2023 medical student. “It is empowering to be part of the wave of post-Covid physicians who are ready to address these growing inequalities.” After witnessing his late mother’s fight with cancer, he says he was driven to serve the community. “I saw physicians and caregivers able to provide so much for my family in ways that I could not,” he admits.
Born in Tasmania, Australia, Larner senior medical student Sean Muniz moved frequently when growing up and is no stranger to making transitions. However, when the pandemic caused a shutdown, he admits the initial switch from in-person to remote learning “was jarring and came with lots of growing pains.” For the past 10 years, the Monkton, Vt., resident has worked as a paramedic – including while returning to college to complete a biology degree and attending medical school at UVM. As a member of the UVM Health Network’s Critical Care Transport team, he found irony in the fact that he would transport Covid patients as a paramedic on the weekends, but could not interact with them as a student.
UVM Class of 2023 medical student Elizabeth Barker, a native of Burlington, Vt., said attending medical school during the pandemic “showed me how important medicine is but also how flawed parts of the system are.” Inspired by the joy her physician mother and physician grandfather have experienced in their careers, she adds that, “They … worked extremely hard, but were always grateful for the role they got to play in people’s lives.”
Grunvald and Barker will be couples matching, which, according to the NRMP, involves linking their rank order lists for residency locations, “usually for purposes of obtaining positions in the same geographic location.” Grunvald is awaiting news of his match into emergency medicine, a field he says he chose due to its unique role as a bridge between the medical establishment and the community and the opportunities it affords for making meaningful change. Barker will be matching into family medicine. She is grateful to have had a strong role model in this field – central Vermont family physician and Larner College of Medicine alum Melissa Houser, M.D. “I hope to be a community doctor that helps make my patients feel seen and heard … and always be a voice for the underdog,” she says.
Muniz is awaiting news of his match into a combined internal medicine and pediatrics residency. He says he hopes “to be empathetic, skilled, knowledgeable, and the kind of doctor that patients and families trust with their care.”
Several Larner Class of 2023 medical students, including those in the military and certain specialties, learned of their residency match locations through early matches outside of the Main Residency Match. Members of UVM’s medical Class of 2023 will receive their medical degrees at Commencement on Sunday, May 21; most will begin their residencies in mid-June.
*Note: The NRMP reports that 42,952 applicants participated in the Main Residency Match.
Larner College of Medicine at the University of Vermont med.uvm.edu
