By Mark Ralston
mralston@stmarysathens.org
The Internal Medicine Residency Program, a joint effort of the Georgia Regents University/UGA Medical Partnership and St. Mary’s Health Care System, announced its first class of residents, who will begin their residency education July 1.
The program received nearly 1,300 applications. A committee of Internal Medicine Residency Program faculty, along with members of the leadership from St. Mary’s and the Medical Partnership, interviewed about 100 candidates.
Resident applicants participated in Match Day and were notified by the National Residency Matching Program where they will pursue their medical residencies. For the first time, 10 applicants learned that they had matched with the internal medicine program sponsored by the GRU/UGA Medical Partnership with St. Mary’s serving as the major participating site.
Matching applicants to specific graduate medical education programs is the culmination of a process during which applicants participate in interviews and visits to residency programs across the country. To determine the postgraduate medical education assignments, applicants rank programs at which they would like to complete residencies, and residency programs rank the applicants. The final pairings, coordinated by NRMP, were announced March 20.
Residents are physicians who have graduated from medical school and are beginning supervised training that leads to licensure to practice medicine.
This first class of residents has a strong connection with Georgia. It includes five individuals who attended UGA for their undergraduate degrees, one of whom also will be a Medical Partnership Class of 2015 graduate. In addition, another individual attended Emory University and received a master’s degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
“We are very pleased that in the first year of our joint residency program, all 10 available positions have been filled,” said Don McKenna, St. Mary’s president and CEO. “To me, this speaks volumes about the attractiveness of our new program to the next generation of physicians. We are proud to be an integral part of this effort to bring more medical doctors to Georgia and to the Athens region in particular.”
“Commitment, hard work and a passion to improve health care are all necessary for the development of a new residency program,” said Dr. Barbara Schuster, dean of the GRU/UGA Medical Partnership. “Like the first class of partnership medical students, these applicants have chosen to seize the opportunity to help build graduate medical education in Athens. Kudos and thanks to everyone who, through teamwork, brought the vision of graduate medical education in Athens to fruition.”
Residents arrive in Athens June 24 for orientation and begin work in the hospital July 1.
