‘A full, complete moment’ Spokane UW medical students get matched to residencies

Until Friday, graduating medical student Ethan Jones did not know where he was going to be the next six years of his life.

Each new doctor spends the first three to seven years of their career in a medical residency where they continue to learn how to practice medicine under supervision. But young doctors do not get to choose where they spend these formative years.

After several interviews and a complicated algorithm, each new doctor is matched to a residency – sometimes far from where they went to medical school.

Jones decided not to open his decision letter until he was in front of his classmates, family and dozens of strangers at Spokane’s University of Washington School of Medicine.

“I wanted it to be a full, complete moment,” Jones said.

The fourth-year medical student isn’t going far; Jones will complete an anesthesiology residency at the University of Washington in Seattle.

When matching with a residency, each soon-to-be doctor ranks a dozen or more programs, and each institution ranks the medical students they interviewed. Those lists are compared by an algorithm, which ultimately decided the placement of every graduating medical student across the country.

Jones previously had a medical rotation in the Seattle program with which he matched.

“It feels like a vote of confidence in me. I had great rotations there, and I think I made a good impression,” he said.

Amanda Ross is staying in Spokane at an internal medicine residency at Sacred Heart. It was her “number one choice.”

“I absolutely wanted to stay in Spokane. I rotated internal medicine during my third-year and I loved the program. I loved the culture of the program and really wanted to stay in the area. My husband is a teacher in Coeur d’Alene, and so this has felt like home for me, and it’s always been home for him. So we are so excited about staying here,” Ross said.

Manisha Sinha, who was also matched at Sacred Heart, said she wants to give back to the community she grew up in.

“I owe all of my education to this community. I went K-12 here, I did undergrad here, medical school and my rotations here. Spokane has really shaped who I am, and just the opportunity to be able to serve the community that has given me so much is just extremely meaningful to me,” Sinha said.

Sinha said the matching process was quite “anxiety-inducing.”

“You are, like, so nervous but also excited. You just have no idea where you’re going,” she said. “It’s where I’ll be for the next four years and where I’ll get to train. And I was very much trusting that the universe would place me where I was meant to be.”

Jones said he felt much more peace going through the matching process. Asked what it meant to be staying with the University of Washington from medical school to residency, all Jones had to say was “go Dawgs!”