Several graduates of Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar (WCMC-Q) have been offered residency positions at prestigious hospitals in the US.
The annual Match Day event was held on the WCMC-Q campus where the students came to know — in the presence of family members, friends, faculty and staff members — about the hospital where they would have their residency training for the next two to seven years of their medical careers.
Eight WCMC-Q graduates will go to New York Presbyterian Hospital, two to Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) and 21 to other well-known hospitals in the US.
WCMC-Q dean Dr Javaid Sheikh congratulated all the students and wished them well for the rest of their careers. “This is a fantastic achievement. These results are a tribute to their hard work and effort, as well as a clear demonstration of the quality of education they have received at WCMC-Q. Our faculty and staff are very proud of each and every one of them,” the dean said.
For Mason al-Nouri, HMC was the place of choice for his residency in orthopaedic surgery.
Recalling the time he has spent at WCMC-Q that helped him prepare for the future, Mason said: “It’s been a great experience. From the start, it’s been a rollercoaster ride of adapting to new information and medical knowledge. It prepares you well for residency as you need to learn a lot in a short period.”
Mason said he applied for HMC because of its reputation. “Orthopaedic surgery is a growing field that I really wanted to pursue,” he added. “I wanted to pursue it in an institute that is well-known and good. HMC is the best place in the region.”
Haya Ahram will have her three-year residency programme in family medicine at University of Connecticut School of Medicine in the US. About her WCMC-Q experience, she said: “It’s been wonderful. Help was always available and the environment was warm and friendly.”
Haya said she chose family medicine as it would allow her to treat a wide range of conditions and pathogens, and provide continuity of care to the entire family. She added that she might pursue a fellowship in palliative care and probably even enter the world of academia in future, although she would want to continue practising as a clinician.
Match Day is a competitive experience that can shape budding medical careers. It is the culmination of a four-year journey for graduating medical students, one of the final hurdles before graduation but equally important in their emerging careers in medicine.
More than 40,000 graduating medical students around the world competed for approximately 25,000 residency positions in the largest match in the National Resident Matching Programme’s history. More than half of US seniors matched their first choice and graduating students from WCMC-Q showed similar results.