A few minutes before 11 a.m. on Friday, UMKC School of Medicine student Pradeep Kandula stood and paced anxiously in front of a table full of family and friends.

“I’m nervous, but also very excited,” Kandula said as he waited for the Match Day letter that would reveal where he will spend the next three years doing his medical residency training. Moments later the nervous tension building throughout UMKC’s Swinney Recreation Center exploded into cries of joy and elation.

Among those cheering was Kandula, who discovered he had matched with his first choice of residencies, a position in internal medicine at the prestigious Cleveland Clinic.

“I’m so excited right now for everyone,” he said. “I’m excited for all of my friends.”

Watch a replay of MATCH DAY 2022 and check out this year’s match list at: https://med.umkc.edu/MatchDay/

From anesthesiology to urology, nearly 100 UMKC students matched in 21 different medical specialties. More than a third of the class elected to go into one of the primary care specialties of family medicine, internal medicine, medicine/pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology or pediatrics.

Internal medicine was the most popular specialty with 19 students matched, followed by anesthesiology, general surgery, psychiatry and preliminary medicine, each with eight matches.

The class will also be spreading out across the country going to 24 different states from California to New York, Florida to Michigan. Thirty-nine graduates will remain in Missouri and 22 will be staying in Kansas City for their training in UMKC residency programs.

Throughout the United States, graduating medical students learned their residency fates at the same time on Match Day, filling more than 36,000 first-year residency positions.

“There is no more memorable day for medical students than Match Day,” said School of Medicine Dean Mary Anne Jackson, M.D., a 1978 graduate of the medical school. “This is the most exciting day for you, your staff and faculty. The wait is over. This next phase defines the rest of your lives.”

For the first time in the school’s 50 years, the School of Medicine’s Match Day event was moved from the school’s UMKC Health Sciences Campus location to the Swinney Center on the university’s Volker Campus. This allowed all of the participating students’ family and friends to take part in the celebration in a single indoor location. In one corner of the crowded room, Sejla Turnadzic proudly held up a cardboard sign that said she had matched in anesthesiology and would be heading to Stanford for residency training.

“I can’t put it into words how happy I am right now,” Turnadzic said.

This was a special time for Turnadzic and the family members with her. Born in Bosnia, Turnadzic moved to the United States with her parents when she was just a year old to escape the war-torn country. Many of her family members remain in Bosnia.

“I’m going to the be first doctor in my family,” she explained. “This is a very big day for us.”

Next to Turnadzic stood Kaylea Gunn, who also matched in anesthesiology and will be going to Vanderbilt University for her residency. The two have been roommates for six years, since the beginning of med school.

Gunn was particularly thrilled with the day because her brother Brady, a graduating student at A.T. Still University osteopathic medical school in Kirksville, Missouri, had just matched as well and attended the Match Day festivities with his sister in Kansas City.

“I didn’t get any sleep last night,” Gunn said. “It has all been so exciting.”

School of Medicine conducts virtual Match Day celebration

2020 UMKC School of Medicine Match List

Match Day 2020 was like no other. Because of Coronavirus concerns, the usual bustle bordering on bedlam at the School of Medicine was replaced by quiet, empty hallways.

There also was a video-streamed and email presentation of where the more than 100 graduates-to-be will serve their medical residencies, leaving them to smaller individual celebrations.

Interim Dean Mary Anne Jackson, M.D., addressed students, their families, faculty and friends with a video message. She congratulated the UMKC Class of 2020 for its hard work of the past six years and called Match Day a rite of passage that is this year all the more significant in light of the pandemic gripping the nation.

“When facing pandemics in the past, physicians have recognized a professional duty to care for patients, even in these difficult circumstances,” Jackson said. “That is why today I emphasize the human side of medicine. Today you promise to commit to put patients first, to always try to be worthy of the privilege of caring for patients, and that you will continue to pursue the education that ensures the care you provide is cutting edge and the best practice.”

Students and their residency matches were revealed as part of the on-line video production.

Just more than half of the UMKC class will be headed to a primary care residency in internal medicine, family medicine, obstetrics/gynecology, or pediatrics. That exceeds the national average and is in line with the school’s mission to provide primary care for the Kansas City area, Missouri and the rest of the Midwest.

While students celebrated at home, some took to social media to share their good news. Student couple Mike VanDillen and Ariana Foutouhi were excited to find that they matched together. See their post below.

The students won assignments in 27 states and the District of Columbia, from Massachusetts to Hawaii and California to Florida. Missouri had 31 of the placements, followed by 11 in Illinois, 10 in Florida, eight in Texas, five in Kentucky and four each in Kansas and California.

And, as usual, some are headed to the top names in medicine, including Mayo, Stanford, the Cleveland Clinic, Harvard, the University of Chicago and UCLA. Twenty-two will stay at UMKC and its affiliate hospitals; a baker’s dozen will be elsewhere in Missouri and Kansas.

Internal medicine was the top category with 39 placements — eight of whom will move on to sub-specialties after a year — followed by 14 in pediatrics or medicine-pediatrics, nine in family medicine, seven in general surgery, six each in anesthesiology and emergency medicine, and five in obstetrics/gynecology.

Jackson said in her message that the soon-to-be residents will join the front line of physicians and health care professional across the country playing a key role in caring for patients and responding to the current health crisis.

“Know that you as resident providers will take the knowledge you’ve learned here, that you will be a partner in the preparation and response that is critical at this time, that you will be the calm that stabilizes those who are afraid, and that you will be the kind, compassionate physician that is the hallmark of our School of Medicine,” Jackson said.

“Congratulations as we celebrate with you today, Match Day 2020.”

Tears were still streaming down Emily McGhee’s face Friday morning long after she had opened her letter from the National Residency Matching Program. This was the day she and her classmates had worked toward and now reality was setting in.

McGhee will be headed to Columbia, Missouri, this summer to begin her residency training in physical medicine and rehabilitation at the University of Missouri-Columbia Affiliated Hospitals.

“I got my number one choice,” McGhee said. “These are tears of joy. I was hoping for it, but to finally see it on paper is so exciting.”

Not even the cold weather and threat of rain that forced the day’s festivities inside could dampen the spirit of Match Day at the UMKC School of Medicine. Shouts of joy rang out from each of the school’s three theaters as 91 students began opening their match letters at 11 a.m.

See the full 2016 Match Day results

The National Residency Matching Program reported nearly 35,000 medical students at schools across the country were part of Match Day events synchronized to take place all at the same time.

Nearly a fourth of this year’s School of Medicine class will be staying in the Kansas City metropolitan area to do their residencies, including 13 at UMKC School of Medicine programs and four in the pediatrics program at Children’s Mercy Kansas City. Just more than half of the class matched with programs in internal medicine, pediatrics, medicine-pediatrics, family medicine or obstetrics/gynecology – specialties that fall into the category of primary care. Internal medicine matches led the list with 22, followed by pediatrics with 17.

This year’s class also learned it will scatter throughout the country to begin residencies at hospitals from New York to Florida to California, and one even in Hawaii.

Parmpreet Kaur is one of those headed to the Big Apple, where she will begin training in child neurology at the Montefiore Medical Center-Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx.

“They have an excellent program there and I knew that I really liked that particular specialty,” Kaur said. “It is a very competitive specialty, so I’m just very, very excited that I matched.”

To make the day even more special, Kaur was celebrating with her parents who had driven from their home in Rochester, Minnesota.

“It was amazing to have them here with me,” she said. “This is such a big milestone.”

For Blake Montgomery, if the day seemed like a long time coming, it was for good reason. Montgomery took a full year off between his fourth and fifth years of the medical school program to be part of a research program at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland.

“A lot of my closest friends graduated last year, but I was fortunate to form a lot of friendships with this year’s class,” Montgomery said. “In some ways, it was like I had two match days.”

Last year, Montgomery stood in the School of Medicine courtyard and celebrated as his future wife, Caitlin Montgomery, matched to a pediatrics residency at Children’s Mercy. This time, it was her turn to watch as Montgomery opened his letter telling him that he had matched with the orthopaedic surgery residency program at Stanford University in California.

“This was worth the wait,” Montgomery said. “I learned a lot from my year in Bethesda about research. But this … it was definitely worth the wait.”