I Matched!

After months of applications, interviews, and waiting, I am pleased to announce that I have matched in Internal Medicine/Pediatrics at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC). This is a combined residency program that smashes six years of training in adult and child medicine into four years. Med/Peds is still the shortest program I could find to let me get out into practice to do what I love after twelve years of graduate and medical school. Doctors who complete this pathway can either become specialists or work in primary care. I intend to do both by entering a niche called "complex care" that includes both diagnosing and treating rare diseases in the hospital and taking care of individuals with multiple life-long health-care needs in the clinic. I imagine my target population as kids with developmental disabilities and related conditions (such as cerebral palsy or Autism Spectrum Disorder)--and their families. Once they age out of their pediatrician, they can still see me, since I will be double boarded in Internal Medicine and Pediatrics.

If you are following along on my Medical Grand Tour, UPMC was one of the last places I interviewed. By January I finally had an idea of what kind of career I want, and what kind of training I need to get there. Med/Peds at UPMC offers all that in an academic medical center--and the #8-ranked children's hospital in the nation--and infrastructure already in place to support the medical humanities--in a mid-sized Midwestern city on the water (three rivers, to be exact). An up-and-coming place, Pittsburgh is five hours from Dear Husband's family and four hours from mine, so the location couldn't be better. Really, it was a no-brainer. So for the last two months, I've been waiting to confirm what I already suspected: that I had found my match, and I didn't even have to kiss a frog. (The mosaic below is from the Pittsburgh Children's Hospital.)

The official photographer didn't get any photos of me making the announcement (how rude!), but you can watch me do so on YouTube by clicking here.

If you're curious how this whole Match thing works, Dear Husband wrote a blog post you can find on the Pianonoise blog.

Click here to see where my classmates matched!