Match Day reveals residencies for UMMC medical students

Published on Monday, March 18, 2024

By: Gary Pettus, gpettus@umc.edu; Annie Oeth, aoeth@umc.edu

Photos By: Joe Ellis and Melanie Thortis/ UMMC Photography

Eric Lucas Jr., who was 10 at the time, was on the road with his father, an emergency medicine physician, when a truck went into a slide, shot skyward and flipped over their car.

“We almost got killed,” Lucas recalled many years later. “Most people would be shocked and stay put, but my dad said, ‘let’s get out,’ and, so, we started busting out windows and pulling people of the truck there on I-10; he was so calm, like the eye in a storm.”

Such is life with a parent who’s a doctor; soon it will be, more or less, the life of the son: On Friday, Lucas became one of 158 senior medical students at the University of Mississippi Medical Center who learned where they will go for their specialty training.

They found out on the day of the 2024 Main Residency Match, which featured, for them, a ceremony at Thalia Mara Hall in Jackson, just one of the many observances held the same day by Match participants across the U.S. and beyond.

Lucas, an Ocean Springs native, was part of the parade of students who mounted the Thalia Mara stage one-by-one, or couple-by-couple, and, Oscar Night-style, opened an envelope and read aloud the contents; his match: thoracic surgery at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

This milestone day, dripping with tradition and, this year, drenched by a drizzling rain, marked a transition to medical residency that began in the fall when students applied to their preferred specialty programs and then interviewed with them. They ranked their preferences, while program directors ranked their preferences for applicants, a sorting process conducted by the National Resident Matching Program through a “matching algorithm.”

“The process of the match is long,” said Dr. LouAnn Woodward, vice chancellor for health affairs and dean of the School of Medicine, “at least a year or more. Last year, 42,952 applicants submitted a rank list. At the same time, all the residency programs around the country did the same thing.”

As the soon-to-be UMMC graduates prepare to head to residencies across the country, Woodward gave them a reminder.

“You’ll get to a point where you decide where you’re going to practice,” she said. “When you get to that point, remember you are needed here in Mississippi."

Among the 155 students, 75 are staying in Mississippi for at least their first year of residency, going to locations from North Mississippi Medical Center in Tupelo to Memorial Hospital in Gulfport. Seventy students matched with UMMC. Ninety matched into a primary care specialty, including pediatrics, family medicine, internal medicine and obstetrics and gynecology.

“Over the next three months, you will transition from being a student to being a physician in training,” said Dr. Loretta Jackson-Williams, vice dean for medical education. “The class of 2024 has truly had a great match. This class has matched into 26 different specialties. The students have matched all across the nation, from as far north as Washington, as far south as Florida, as far west as California and as far east as New Hampshire.”

Students, wherever they matriculate, are apt to face individual challenges during the brain-busting four years of medical school. But for most of their training, the members of the class of 2024 faced a test of will and perseverance never seen before – and did it together.

As Addie Hitt put it: “We started with masks.” In August 2020, COVID-19 entered medical school with them.

“COVID made it so difficult at first to get to know people, to make friends,” Hitt said “We missed out on a traditional White Coat Ceremony and other events. We found other ways to get to know each other, though.

“I love my class. I wish we could all match at the same place. They’re some of the greatest people I’ve ever met.

“Coming out of COVID, I believe, has made us much more grateful for the time we were finally able to spend together.”

Hitt, who chose internal medicine-pediatrics, may get to spend even more time with some of her classmates – those who, like her, matched at UMMC.

Growing up in Mooreville, she helped out at her family’s “mom-and-pop” eatery, Comer’s Restaurant in nearby Mantachie – which, in its way, prepared her for her chosen career.

“Hospitality has been a huge part of my life,” Hitt said. “It’s probably why I’m in medicine – you’re serving people in both, just in a different way.”

The first doctor in her family, Hitt chose to become a physician, in part, because of a nurse – her aunt, Lori Sheffield. “She exposed me to medicine,” she said, “but I got into it also because of my love of science and my love of people. And now I love what I do every day.

“That type of connection with people is something you can’t get anywhere else.”

For his part, Lucas was also drawn to the medical fold through family ties – those with his father, Eric Sr., of course, but also with his mother, Dr. Verna Lucas, a dentist.

“She’s the main reason I want to be a surgeon,” Eric Lucas said. Coincidentally, or maybe not, his parents had him develop his manual dexterity, beginning at age 2, when he started violin lessons and, later on, pottery classes.

“My mom made sure I had a solid work ethic,” Lucas said. “I’ve had a job since I was 10 – dog walker, laundromat worker, lawn care worker, florist.” While working at a restaurant, he rose from dishwasher to sous chef.

“My parents also taught me sports fishing when I was 13,” he said. “I loved cleaning fish, looking at the anatomy. I cleaned fish for other people just so I would be able to look inside and see the bladder, figuring out how they float – and just so I could get my hands dirty.”

Certainly, such memories were in the back, or front, of the future surgeon’s mind on Match Day, as were these thoughts: “Thank you, Lord,” he said.

“To have made it this far, I’m thankful for my family and for my fiancé (third-year medical student Marissa Anderson of Ocean Springs). I would not have been able to do all this without them.

“And I’m thankful for the family I’ve gained here. Those who have helped me on the clinical side and those in student affairs. And all the physicians and surgeons who opened doors for me.”

For Erin Sears of Monticello, two members of her actual family are part of the Medical Center family as well: Husband Jaylan Sears is a grant accounting manager in the Department of Medicine; her brother, Dr. Ben Rushing, is a dermatology resident, and the Rushings’ first physician.

“But I wanted to be a doctor before he did,” she said. Now, they will be doctors in the same place, at UMMC, where Erin Sears matched in internal medicine.

UMMC was an easy choice – for medical school and residency, Sears said. “The reason a lot of people come here is because of the deans in student affairs – Dr. (Lyssa) Weatherly and Dr. (Mike) McMullan – who are so supportive when you’re overwhelmed or during difficult times.”

She should know. Early in her third year of medical school, her mom was critically injured and had to be airlifted from Monticello to the Medical Center.

“That’s been one of the most informative experiences I’ve had,” Sears said, “and it affects the way I will treat my patients.

“It may be easy to forget why you as a physician should take five minutes out of your time to talk to a patient and the patient’s family. You may forget how lost you can feel as a patient. For those who don’t have a medical background, I can only imagine how lost.

“With that in mind, that experience changed how I approach communicating with my patients and their families, and it’s been something good that came out of a bad situation.”