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Paige Jones-Brooks celebrates her match to UAMS Pediatrics. Image by Bryan Clifton

UAMS Holds Match Day Celebrations for College of Medicine Seniors

March 22, 2023 | Freshmen at Start of Pandemic, Class of 2023 Attended Majority of Classes Virtually

About 150 senior medical students and their guests gathered on the morning of March 17 on two UAMS campuses to find out where they will be continuing their training after receiving their medical degrees in May.

Dubbed the “March Madness of Medicine” by one of the featured speakers, the Match Day event brought together members of a senior class that made history by becoming the first to attend the majority of their classes virtually after the COVID-19 pandemic shut down regular operations toward the end of their first year.

In the Wally Allen Ballroom of the Statehouse Convention Center in Little Rock, where the great majority of seniors tore open envelopes at 11 a.m. to learn where they had matched for their residencies, both the stage and the crowd were awash in shades of green, in honor of St. Patrick’s Day.

For the 13 seniors at the UAMS Northwest Regional Campus in Fayetteville, a less formal ceremony was held at the Graduate Hotel off the town square, preceded by a full breakfast for them and their guests.

“Your class will forever be marked as the one that endured the most challenging health care crisis of our lifetimes,” Phillip Wallace, physician recruiter at Baptist Health, told those assembled in Little Rock. “Mere months into your medical education, you were saddled with a worldwide pandemic, the likes of which we have not seen in over 100 years. But through hard work and perseverance, you have survived the challenge and stand ready to take the next one.”

“It’s not hyperbole to say your time in medical school really was like no other,” agreed G. Richard Smith, M.D., interim dean of the College of Medicine. “We all know that medical school presents tremendous challenges under any circumstances, but by the end of your freshman year, the entire world had changed with the emergence and then the surge of COVID-19. So I congratulate you for your perseverance and your agility as you overcame the many obstacles that the pandemic created for your medical education.”

Like Wallace, who made the reference to the March Madness basketball tournament that had just begun, Smith emphasized the nationwide shortage of physicians, particularly in the primary care fields. He encouraged those who are heading to other states for their residencies “to consider returning to Arkansas when you are through with your training.”

“Our state needs people like you,” Smith told the budding doctors. “We need physicians like you. So remember the door is always open for you.”

 Sara Tariq, associate dean of student affairs in the college, continued with that theme, reminding the seniors that one of UAMS’ missions is to create doctors for Arkansas, and that UAMS is proud to be among the top medical schools in the nation for primary care physicians.

Tariq said that 76 people, or 50% of the 149 UAMS seniors who participated in the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP), ended up matching into primary care specialties: internal medicine, family medicine, obstetrics/gynecology, pediatrics and Med-Peds (combined internal medicine and pediatrics).

Six additional seniors participated in early match programs for members of the military and those pursuing specialties in urology and ophthalmology, which have separate programs, for a total of 155 UAMS seniors finding a match.

Tariq said that 14 seniors in the NRMP program failed to match initially, but 11 of them soon found a position through the Supplemental Offer and Acceptance Program.  Those who didn’t match through either option can take a transitional position for a year and then try again next year.

When all is said and done, Tariq said, 69 seniors will remain in Arkansas for post-graduate training, while 84 are headed off to 29 other states for their residencies.

Nationwide, 48,156 students applied for 37,425 available positions that were offered to U.S. medical school graduates, international medical students and doctor of osteopathy graduates.

“In the face of a serious and growing shortage of primary care physicians across the U.S., there was a record number of primary care positions offered in the 2023 Residency Match,” according to the NRMP website.

Among the UAMS graduates was Micah Bowling, class president, who took a rather unusual path to medical school.

Bowling said that going to medical school was never in the cards until he was in the final stages of pursuing another kind of doctoral degree: a Doctor of Musical Arts, also known as a DMA.

Although at first glance the two disciplines may seem worlds apart, Bowling said the study of music sparked his interest in medicine when he began researching intraoral pressure among woodwind players for his doctoral dissertation, which focused on musician related health issues.

The research involved anatomy and physics — subjects that Bowling found so intriguing that he began looking beyond his DMA and toward a career in medicine.

At the time, Bowling was attending the University of North Texas, and his wife was finishing medical school and preparing to begin her residency in psychiatry at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. He said his wife’s career and the fact that his mother was a nurse and two older siblings are physician assistants only added fuel to his new dream.

So, when his wife completed her residency and was about to begin a psychiatric fellowship at UAMS, “I decided I would give it a try,” said the Texarkana native.

When he began medical school at UAMS, the couple already had one child, a boy who is now 7, and Bowling’s wife was pregnant with a second child, a boy who is now 3. Their third child, a girl, was born nine months ago.

As Bowling prepares to begin his residency in radiation oncology at UAMS, his top choice, his wife is a practicing pediatric psychiatrist in Little Rock.

Bowling said he chose to pursue radiation oncology because, during his medical school rotations, “I always found myself interested in oncology and cancer patients.”

Cameron Brownlee, the class vice president, was among the seniors who participated in the couples match part of the NRMP. It allows couples who want to obtain residencies in the same program or even the same geographic location to link their rank order lists. This forms pairs of program choices that are considered by the matching algorithm.

Brownlee and his girlfriend, Calie Morrison, began dating while undergraduates at Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia and attended medical school together at UAMS, finishing at the Northwest Regional Campus in Fayetteville.

They plan to get married a week after graduation and head off together to an internal medicine residency program at the University of Iowa in Iowa City to which they jointly matched.

Brownlee said he and Morrison, both 24, weren’t thinking about residency programs when they entered medical school, but were thrilled to learn about the couples match program about halfway through their second year.

“To know there are policies in place for this to occur definitely makes life simpler,” he said.

He said both he and Morrison always planned to become primary care physicians, even if they each toyed with other specialties during medical school. Both also represent the first generation in their families to attend medical school.

The couples match program isn’t just for couples in the traditional sense. It allows other pairs, such as siblings and friends, to rank their residency choices together.

According to the NRMP, a couple will match to the most preferred pair of programs on their lists where each person has been offered a position. Partners are treated by the matching algorithm solely as a couple. If they don’t match as a couple, the algorithm doesn’t process their rank order lists separately to find a possible match for each individual.

The couples match also proved beneficial to married seniors Andrew Campbell, who was matched to a Med-Peds residency at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and Morgan Campbell, who matched to a neurology residency at the same place.

The couple, both 26, met playing basketball in Colorado, where they were married during their senior year of college before jointly applying to medical school at UAMS.

Andrew, who is from Russellville, said he and Morgan, who is from Buffalo, Missouri, “didn’t have any glitches” with the couples match, but each refused to undergo interviews with any residency program that couldn’t also provide an interview to the other person.

He said they felt fortunate to be able to attend classes virtually from under the same roof once classes became virtual at the end of their first year.

“You feel a sense of support when you’re under the same roof,” he said, noting that it eased the sense of isolation that others may have felt, especially after events with their peers were canceled.