The final months of a medical student’s fourth year are exciting and scary all at the same time. Even though schedules finally slow down after months of long hours and high stress, students have to wait until one magic day to find out where they will spend the next several years for their residency. 

Last Thursday was that thrilling day, Match Day, which took place across the nation for all graduating medical students. Once again, I was very impressed with where our talented students will be conducting their resident training as new physicians.

From our Wichita campus, 24 percent of the graduating students will be entering family medicine, and 56 percent will be entering primary care. Forty-three percent of the students who graduate from Wichita will stay there and train in a Wichita Center for Graduate Medical Education (WCGME) residency program. This is great news for Kansas.

Once again, many of our students from both the Kansas City and Wichita campuses were accepted into very prestigious programs across the country. For example, we have students accepted into resident programs at the Mayo School of Graduate Medical Education in Rochester, Minn.; Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston; Yale-New Haven Hospital in Connecticut; Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio; and Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. This is also great news for Kansas, as some of the students will come back to Kansas to practice after their residency. Clearly, these prestigious programs know of our outstanding medical education curriculum, and previous graduates have demonstrated just how good a KU School of Medicine education is.  I am especially proud that over the last four to five years, we have consistently placed at least one or two students at Mayo and other world-renowned programs.

Congratulations to these fourth-year medical students, and to the faculty and staff who have taught and supported them along the way. These outstanding results from Match Day are something we can all be proud of.

Education

Glen Cox, MD, MBA, MHSA, professor of health policy and management, has been named chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management. Congratulations, Dr. Cox. Read more.

Kudos

Ken Davis, PT, MPH, clinical assistant professor in health information management and senior coordinator for advising and recruitment in the School of Allied Health, has been named to the REACH Healthcare Foundation Board of Directors. He joins Josh Freeman, MD, professor and chair of family medicine, and Scott Glasrud, executive vice president and chief financial officer of KU Hospital, on the board. Congratulations, Ken.

Natalia Loskutova, MD, a PhD candidate in the Rehabilitation Science program, won second place in the Science and Engineering Category at the KU Graduate Research Competition held in Lawrence.  Loskutova's presentation was entitled "Bone Mineral Density and Brain Atrophy in Early Alzheimer's Disease." Congratulations, Natalia.

Brittany Gorres, a doctoral student in molecular and integrated physiology, was recognized by KansasBIO with $500 for her exceptional research presented at the Sixth Annual Graduate Research Summit on March 12 at the capitol in Topeka. Her research focused on measuring the combined effect of a high-fat diet and estrogen loss on insulin resistance. Congratulations, Brittany. Read more about the Summit from the Lawrence Journal-World.