7 AM: Medical students around the country waited to find out where they’ve matched for residency. To call them anxious would be an understatement.
“I feel anxiety, but it’s laced with excitement, and it’s laced with awe,” said Casey Weiser as she waited for the David Geffen School of Medicine (DGSOM) Match.
9 AM: Students raced to find their envelopes, and then sounds (and feelings) of elation filled the air.
The future physicians spent the next few hours giving bear hugs, sharing happy tears, and smiling for family photos.
Match bliss lasts for weeks, but eventually, the future residents must ask: Now what?
They’ve always had a general idea of what comes after Match: They graduate and head to residency. But as the big-picture idea of residency becomes a specific role at a specific place, students realize they have to prepare mentally, emotionally, and logistically—all while handling the nerves that come along with starting life as a resident.
We reconnected with Casey Weiser (quoted and featured in the video above) to find out what happened after she matched into a family medicine residency at the North Colorado Family Medicine Center, her top choice.
Casey and her husband were mentally prepared to move anywhere. "On the way over to brunch after Match I looked over at my husband and asked if he wanted to move to Colorado.”
She jokes that her question was really just a courtesy check-in, but it soon evolved into a real logistical question: How do we actually move to Colorado?
It’s all one big pile of spaghetti that we have to sort through,” Casey says, but she knows they’ll figure out all the details, one “noodle” at a time.
Casey and her husband on Match Day
Post-Match students face a new world focused more on patient care and less on familiar academic protocols.
During a Global Health Rotation in rural South Africa, Casey brushed up on procedures and connected with the humanistic side of patient care.
Years ago, physicians at her rotation center started inviting pregnant women delivering via Cesarean section (C-section) to sing. This helped the team, usually short-staffed, monitor the mother's breathing.
What started as necessity turned into tradition, a way for doctors and patients to bond. Casey says she'll always remember being a apart of it. “It was a beautiful way to welcome a kid into the world,” she says.
Casey says nothing quite prepares anyone for residency. “Medical school gives us the medical knowledge, but we truly learn medicine in residency,” she explains.
She’s confident the knowledge she gained at the DGSOM has prepared her to handle anything that comes her way in residency and in her future practice.
There’s a system in place that ensures I will emerge competent,” she says. “I graduated from a place that is known for producing excellent physicians.”
