Match Day returned for a second year at St. Mary’s Dominican High School with Dominican students in Mrs. Janine Koenig’s Biology II Honors class and Archbishop Rummel High School students in Dr. Brian Credo’s Bio-Med class participating. Match Day occurs annually across the country when the National Resident Matching Program releases the results of applicants seeking residency and fellowship training positions in the United States.
Prior to Match Day, the Dominican and Rummel students researched a medical specialty of interest and locations throughout the country with residency programs in that specialty. Students ranked programs in order of preference. On Match Day they opened their envelopes to see if they matched their program of interest. All students paired off to interview each other to determine what residencies they chose.
Mrs. Koenig said the Match Day experience expands her students’ future goals. “Dr. Credo explains the current requirements for entry into medical school. If they are aware of the pre-requisite courses, they can consider other majors while remaining open to the possibility of Medicine,” noted Mrs. Koenig. “This year, 22 students selected 17 different specialties. Emergency Medicine, Dermatology, and Neurology were selected by more than one student, each student sharing their particular reason for choosing that residency program. After researching different residency specialties, the week culminates with the actual recreation of a Match Day. It is a fun and memorable experience for both our students and the Rummel students and will possibly encourage them to consider a career in medicine.”
In addition to teaching Ethics at the Tulane Med School , Dr. Credo is a Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics and serves on the Council for School Health-which addresses the medical needs of school aged children across the country. Director of his alma maters’ Biomedicine track in the pre-professional program, he helped to implement a lesson plan by the American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC) to interest high school students in a career in medicine.
“Lewis Carroll once said that one of the deep secrets of life is that the only things that are really worth doing are what we do for others,” Dr. Credo shared, “I believe most good science teachers – and Mrs. Koenig is certainly one of those – want to link their classroom teaching to relevant situations in the wider world. We thought an activity like this might spur interest in medical careers. To my knowledge, our two institutions are the only schools locally who put this together in our unique way, all the while being based on a lesson plan formulated by the AAMC. We would certainly be willing to help other schools who were interested.”
