Mastering the Match: South Carolina med students come out on top in choice of residencies

When she was 7 years old in Beirut, Nour Hijazi got a book about American cities, and one in particular captured her heart.

"Ever since then, my dream has been to live in New York City," she said.

On Match Day at the Medical University of South Carolina, her dream came true, along with the dreams of many of her medical school classmates.

Match Day is an annual ritual when tens of thousands of senior medical students across the country, and the world, simultaneously find out where they will spend the next several years in a medical residency training program learning a specialty and honing their craft. Nearly 45,000 students submitted a ranked choice list for 41,503 positions at 6,395 programs this year, according to the National Resident Matching Program.

A computer then compares that to the program's ranked list of students and a "match" with the student's highest choice is selected. The residency for each student is then sent to the schools, who often place them into envelopes for students to open at noon on Match Day.

The positions are critical because not only is that where the newly minted doctor will spend the next several years, but often it becomes where they will choose to practice.

While many at MUSC will get their top choice, some won't, and College of Medicine Dean Terry Steyer left them with this thought before they opened their envelopes and students then came up before a packed audience at Charleston Music Hall to share where they are going.

"Remember, that program wants you," Steyer said. "They see something in you that they want to take and train and mold."

For Hijazi, it was all about the vascular surgery residency at Mount Sinai in New York City.

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Taking the stage to Jay-Z's "Empire State of Mind," Hijazi had pre-selected the song as a way of "manifesting I would end up in New York City. And I did," she said to loud cheers from the audience.

For Lee Cagle, it was a much shorter trip to his dream scenario. Growing up in Florence, and after graduating from Clemson University, he took a position as a patient care tech at McLeod Regional Medical Center and gained valuable experience before medical school.

"I felt comfortable talking to patients and talking to families," he said. It was also where he got to work with ear, nose and throat surgeons and found that he liked not just the practice, but how they worked.

"It’s the people who initially drew me to it," Cagle said. "I liked the operating room environment, but then I liked how down-to-earth and personable they were."

He came to MUSC with that in mind, and, after seeing a lot of other specialties, remained committed to it. He also admired and bonded with the ENT faculty at MUSC, which is one reason it was his first choice.

"MUSC is a very, very strong ENT program, and Charleston is tough to beat, as well," Cagle said. After he opened his enveloped to see he was staying at MUSC, he could hardly get the words out as he spoke to his classmates.

"My cup is very full," Cagle said.

He is among the 51, or 35 percent of his 145 classmates, who will be staying in South Carolina to do a residency, with 41 of them at MUSC, the school reported. Nine will be doing residencies in military medicine programs. At the University of South Carolina School of Medicine in Columbia and Greenville, 182 students matched and 25 percent will stay in the Palmetto State for their residencies.

Cagle is among those who wanted to stay near family, as well. It was one reason Ryan Moore of Summerville and Caroline Fields of Mount Pleasant chose to match as a couple at Duke University in Durham, N.C., he in internal medicine with a goal of becoming a cardiologist, she in anesthesiology.

"We liked that it was close to home," Fields said.

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But Match Day was not even the biggest event for them this weekend — they are getting married the following day.

"We have a rehearsal dinner in six hours," Moore said, straining to be heard above the din of his classmates.

Kelly Rutherford is bringing valuable personal experience to her residency — she had just given birth three weeks before interviewing for an OB/GYN residency positions last fall. She brought 4-month-old Tucker up on stage with her, drawing a collective "Awww" from the audience, before announcing she would stay at MUSC.

"I'm thrilled to be here," Rutherford said.

It is a watershed moment for the students and is the latest stage for a journey Hijazi began in 2015 in her first year of medical school at American University of Beirut. The school has a collaborative agreement with MUSC to accept medical students who also want to pursue a doctorate, and she applied after her second year. Hijazi came to MUSC in 2017 to complete her doctorate, where she studied the role of the protein paxillin in causing scarring in the liver, before then coming back to medical school at finish up at MUSC this year.

Vascular surgery offers Hijazi the chance to do both high-stress and low-stress procedures, sometimes in the same day, in a quickly evolving field.

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"As someone who is a huge nerd and just loves being a lifetime learner, I feel like vascular is the field for me because there is literally new advances happening every day," she said.

Even before finding out he would get his wish to stay in Charleston, Cagle said he and his classmates are blessed to be in the position they are in.

"At the end of the day, you’re very fortunate to match into something you are passionate about," he said.

And even with five years of training ahead, and possibly more, it is a journey Cagle is happy to be on.

"The best is yet to come."