Match Day 2022: Graduating Medical Students Receive Their Residency Matches

During a special celebration, 124 students at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai learned what the next phase of their career path would be at Match Day 2022, when each of them opened a carefully sealed envelope that revealed the U.S. residency program they had “matched” to and would be attending this year following graduation.

The graduating Class of 2022 matched to 25 specialties and to many of the most competitive residency programs in the nation, including the Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia, Yale New Haven Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital, Johns Hopkins and Washington University.  A total of 52 students will remain within the Mount Sinai Health System for at least part of their residency training.

The most popular specialties for matching students were Internal Medicine (23), Emergency Medicine (10), Anesthesiology (14), General Surgery (9), Obstetrics and Gynecology (9), and Psychiatry (8).

The School hosted a hybrid celebration on Friday, March 18, beginning with a fully-produced and highly energetic television show, culminating with a reveal of the matches and a carnival-themed after party. Each year, the matches are orchestrated through the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP), which uses mathematical algorithms to align the preferences of applicants with the preferences of residency programs available at teaching hospitals across the nation.

On Match Day, the Mount Sinai Health System also extended residency offers to 557 students from across the country, including graduates from sixteen of the nation’s top twenty medical schools, who will arrive in July.

Meet three of the graduates, who display the range of experiences and accomplishments of this year’s class.

Kimia Ziadkhanpour

Kimia Ziadkhanpour, the first in her family to become a doctor, matched to anesthesia at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

Her interest in medicine began when she was six years old. In her native Tehran, she and her grandfather would hold hands as they traveled 30 miles on public buses to appointments with his cardiologist after he experienced a heart attack in his early 70s.

“At first his prognosis seemed good and his spirits were high; we would play in the yard every day,” she says. “But about a year and half later he died. My father tried to explain to me how he died, and none of it made sense to me. So I started searching for answers in books about science and anatomy.”

Indeed, as she grew older, Ms. Ziadkhanpour would wonder if her grandfather might have lived longer if he had had better care, or a doctor who was closer.

When she was seven, she moved to the United States, which opened doors to continue her interest in medicine later in life, first at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, then later at the Icahn School of Medicine.

“One of the things I will take away from my experience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai is the idea that we treat every patient as if they are family, regardless of their background. And we give the same level of care to our patients, whether they come through the doors of our student run East Harlem Health Outreach Partnership and have no insurance or if they are from the wealthy, Upper East Side,” says Ms. Ziadkhanpour.

Thomas Fetherston

Thomas Fetherston matched to Tripler Army Medical Center in Hawaii through the military match in December. The only veteran in the class of 2022, Mr. Fetherston, a Second Lieutenant, served in the U.S. Army, where his experiences as a combat medic reinforced his interest in emergency medicine.

Having served a tour in Afghanistan, he traveled full circle when he and colleagues at Mount Sinai worked together to hold a clinic for evacuees of Afghanistan in New Jersey, in collaboration with the Church World Service, a faith-based organization that provides development, disaster relief, and refugee assistance around the world.

“The clinic was an incredibly meaningful culmination of my four years of medical school and Army service. In just one single day, we were able to evaluate 28 patients, four of whom needed immediate treatment and another 15 who need follow up treatment,” he says. The Health System and the medical school place a huge value on the community and the importance of providing service to address inequities in health care access, and this is just one small example.”

Thomas Fetherston outside of Souf village, near Kandahar in Afghanistan

Parth Trivedi

Parth Trivedi matched to Internal Medicine at The Mount Sinai Hospital.

In his fourth year as a medical student, Mr. Trivedi co-authored an important paper that was published in Gastroenterology in January, 2022, which described a troubling increase in early-onset colorectal cancer and precancerous polyps among adults under the age of 50. It was the first large-scale study to look at precancerous polyps in this age group, representing a significant contribution to the literature on early onset pre-cancerous lesions in this age group.

Mr. Trivedi, who helped design the study and provide statistical analysis, says he hopes the study will make a difference.

“We hope that the data we shared and our analysis will ultimately inform decision making by policymakers and primary care doctors on whom to screen and how early,” he says.

Nursing Excellence: A Valued Preceptor Role Models Emotional as Well as Clinical Patient Care

Megan Pace, RN, MSN, a nurse in the Intensive Care Unit at Mount Sinai Beth Israel

Megan Pace, RN, MSN, has been a nurse in the Intensive Care Unit at Mount Sinai Beth Israel since 2010. According to Maria LaTrace, RN, BSN, MSN, Senior Nursing Director, Patient Care Service at the hospital, Megan has always been a source of reliable and dependable guidance to her peers and is considered the “go to” for precepting and onboarding new nurses to the unit.

Within the past year, Megan has been a preceptor on almost every shift. Maria says that Megan displays tireless enthusiasm, patience, and diligence with the new staff members. “She is able to find the energy to make every single one of them feel that she or he is her priority.”

“It’s important to understand that nursing is more than just giving medications and charting at a computer, you have to remember there is a person and their loved ones on the receiving end of your care.”

Despite the incredible strain and cumulative burden of the past two years in ICU nursing, Megan is the “voice of reason” on her unit, Maria says. “She brings a measured sense of calm to every situation, which is invaluable for her orientees to witness, in that they see how to use rational, logical, and evidence-based reasoning in all decisions.”

That is certainly the case for one of Megan’s orientees, Jasmine Brinson, RN, BSN.

“Megan has been a great contributor to my smooth transition from medical surgical nursing to critical care. Venturing into a new specialty can be challenging and overwhelming, but Megan was always patient with me and encouraged me to ask as many questions as possible,” Jasmine says. “During my first week off orientation, I was so overwhelmed and felt unsure of myself. Megan was working on the opposite side of the unit, and she literally dropped everything and came to assist me, at the same time reassuring me that I was doing just fine.”

Having been a teacher before she moved into nursing, Megan feels she is perfectly suited to the role of preceptor.

“I have had some great role models throughout my career, and I have always strived to emulate their behaviors and make sure I am modeling those same behaviors for my orientees,” she says. “I think being a good role model is a key characteristic of being a good preceptor. It’s important to understand that nursing is more than just giving medications and charting at a computer, you have to remember there is a person and their loved ones on the receiving end of your care. When precepting, I try to stress the importance of the social and emotional aspect of nursing to my orientees. It is important they make it just as much of a priority as giving that medication or charting blood pressure.”

She adds, “These past two years have been rough for health care workers, but knowing that patients and their families appreciate my care makes it all worthwhile.”

SARS-CoV-2: Three Leading Microbiologists Discuss the Path Forward

From left: Florian Krammer, PhD, Adolfo García-Sastre, PhD, and Peter Palese, PhD

Microbiologists at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, who created the first and most reliable test to determine whether an individual has antibodies to SARS-CoV-2, have been monitoring the virus since it began circulating in Wuhan, China, in late 2019.

Now, Peter Palese, PhD, Horace W. Goldsmith Professor and Chair of the Department of Microbiology, and Florian Krammer, PhD, Mount Sinai Professor in Vaccinology— weigh in on the future of SARS-CoV-2 and its place in our lives. They, and their colleague, Adolfo García-Sastre, PhD, the Irene and Dr. Arthur M. Professor of Medicine, recently created a low-cost COVID-19 vaccine that can be manufactured wherever influenza vaccines are made—particularly in low-and-middle-income countries. The scientists are also working on a universal flu vaccine, which would confer immunity without having to be administered annually.

As we move away from this pandemic will SARS-CoV-2 continue to play a large part in our lives?  

Dr. Palese: Clearly the future is difficult to predict, but one likely scenario would be similar to the way we manage influenza viruses, which necessitates continuing vaccinations as we go into the future—perhaps once a year or once every two years. In this case, the virus continually changes but the effects can be ameliorated by vaccines, and those vaccines have to be changed. But they reduce fatality and hospitalization and the need for people to stay home.

Dr. Krammer: In this scenario the virus is not going to disappear. It’s just going to stick around and become the fifth coronavirus that circulates in humans. The other four coronaviruses make up about 30 percent of all common colds, and they’re seasonal; they come in the winter like influenza.

Dr. García-Sastre: Some of these common coronaviruses that cause the common cold have been with us for a long time and are very different from SARS-CoV-2. They are happily living with us, rarely cause any major disease, and do not cause a threat.

Dr. Krammer: Now, influenza typically causes more damage than these common coronaviruses which are typically causing mild infection, except in people who have problems with their immune system who are sometimes brought to the intensive care unit. I think SARS-CoV-2 will land somewhere between influenza and human coronaviruses—between those two extremes.

Is it possible that this virus will simply disappear?

Dr. Palese: You can never exclude the possibility that this virus will peter out the way the coronavirus (SARS-CoV-1) did twenty years ago, when it emerged to cause some really high fatalities but disappeared. On the one hand it was a nightmare, but then it was over.

Dr. Krammer: I don’t think the virus will just disappear, but it might. We didn’t think there would be so many variants this quickly, especially not something like Omicron, so there might be surprises. I hope for society’s sake that this fades into the background and we’re not afraid every fall that another wave is coming. The scenario I would like to see in six months is that Peter and I – as virologists – are concerned about it but that the problem is insignificant enough so that the public does not have to be. We’ll see if that happens.

How do we continue to ensure protection from COVID-19?

Dr. Krammer: We have to look at the baseline immunity that exists in the population. If a lot of people have immunity and there is less virus circulating chances are that you either don’t get infected or, if you get infected, your immunity will be protect you against severe outcomes. Then the disease and infections become less relevant. And that is what we hope for. Now, you can get there through vaccinations—that’s the painless way, or you can get there by having had the infections, and that’s the painful way. But both contribute to having higher baseline immunity in the population. Unfortunately, even in this scenario, immunocompromised patients are still at risk of severe outcomes although there risk of getting infected is lower.

Dr. García-Sastre: Vaccinations are still the solution to the problem. We should make sure that as many people as possible are vaccinated and boosted.

Dr. Krammer: I think we need to keep working on vaccines against SARS-CoV-2. Right now we have this situation where the vaccine protects very well against severe disease if you’re not immune compromised. But those vaccines are not protecting very well from infection anymore. They did against the original virus, but not with the variants. That’s why, for example, we need a variant-specific vaccine for Omicron. There are ways to make vaccines differently so you get more sterilizing immunity, which would suppress infections more, in general, and that would make the world safer for those who don’t mount good immune responses.

Dr. Palese: In creating our COVID-19 vaccine at Mount Sinai, we are using the Newcastle-disease virus in a vector-driven approach. If the FDA [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] is agreeable and allows the comprehensive use of genetically modified viruses, such as ours, then we can prevent the emergence of these new variants by vaccinating right away with the correct vaccine against the new variant, and we should be in good shape.

Do you think the public needs a fourth vaccine right now?

Dr. Krammer: For populations that don’t mount optimal responses or their responses disappear quickly, there might be an advantage in getting another dose. But for the general population, I don’t think this is useful right now. If there is a fourth dose, it should be variant-specific, an adapted vaccine that reflects what’s circulating right now.

For immunocompromised individuals, there are already a couple of important therapeutic treatments—including PAXLOVID from Pfizer Inc., operating under the FDA’s emergency use authorization—that can help them to greatly reduce their risk of a severe outcome.

Is it feasible to create a universal coronavirus vaccine—similar to the universal influenza vaccine you are developing?

Dr. Krammer: By universal you mean a variant-proof SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, I assume? One that would protect against all variants? We’ve made a lot of progress with the universal influenza vaccine in the last few years. But vaccine development has just started for coronaviruses and there are a lot of approaches out there. Coronaviruses are very diverse. A truly universal coronavirus vaccine would include protection against SARS-CoV-1 and other viruses in that subgenus and then you have a bigger genus of betacoronaviruses and, in addition, you have alpha-, delta-, and gammacoronaviruses (meant are the coronavirus genera, not the SARS-CoV-2 variants). So developing a universal coronavirus vaccine that would protect against all of them is a very big ask. It might be possible at some point, but it is small steps now and would take a lot of time. Of course, something that protects against variants that are around now or could be developed within the next five years, that’s actually possible.

As COVID-19 Cases Fall, Here Are Four Things to Keep in Mind About Masking and Safety

The CDC has assigned a “community level” of COVID-19 risk for each county in the United States, based on factors like total COVID-19 cases and hospital admissions. Right now the level is “low” in most of the New York City area.

The number of COVID-19 cases in New York is returning to the levels before the Omicron surge that began in December, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has announced new guidance on masking.

We are heading in the right direction, and “there is reason for guarded optimism,” says Bernard Camins, MD, Medical Director for Infection Prevention at the Mount Sinai Health System, who has been tracking COVID-19 since the first cases were identified in New York in March 2020.

As the pandemic in New York approaches the two-year mark, here are four things to keep in mind:

  • Masks are still required in hospitals and health care facilities and on public transportation. N95 and KN95-type masks give you the most protection, followed by surgical masks, with cloth masks offering the least. We recommend you wear the best type of mask you are comfortable wearing that covers your mouth and nose.
  • The CDC has now assigned a “community level” of COVID-19 risk for each county in the United States, based on factors like total COVID-19 cases and hospital admissions. Right now the level is “low” in most of the New York City area. That means masks are not required in most places, but you can choose to mask at any time. If you have symptoms and a positive test you should isolate and stay home for at least six days and wear a mask when around others until you have recovered. If you have been exposed to someone with COVID-19, you should wear a mask around others until you are certain you have not been infected.  You can check your county’s “community level” on the CDC website.
  • Getting vaccinated and a booster shot is still recommended and is the best way to protect you and your family against the disease. Boosters are recommended even if you have already had COVID-19.
  • There are still many people who are at higher risk of infection: older adults, people with weakened immune systems (such as those who have been receiving active cancer treatment for tumors or cancers of the blood), and kids under five, as vaccines have not yet been authorized for young children.

One final note: Mount Sinai is committed to providing you with the COVID-19 information you need to keep yourself and your family safe and healthy. You can always find the latest updates from public health authorities and on our website.

Why a Master’s Degree? Mount Sinai’s Outstanding Graduate Students Share Their Experiences and Aspirations

Here, we share the educational journeys of seven current and former students at Mount Sinai’s Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. Learn what they are studying and how they will use their degree as they explore new paths and careers.

Medical Student Takes Detour to Understand the Potential of Artificial Intelligence

“I envision myself becoming an ambassador between the clinical side and the engineers and technicians who are on the development side, or even developing tools myself. Either way, my goal is to be on the forefront of harnessing AI for the benefit of dementia patients.”

Read his story

Aleta Murphy, MSBS: How a Brother With Autism Started a Mount Sinai Graduate Student on a Scientific Journey 

“Mount Sinai appealed to me because of the strong focus on biology as it relates to human diseases and medicine.”

Read her story

Briana Bell, MPH, Came to Mount Sinai for a Master of Public Health and Discovered a World of Research Opportunities

“I was also drawn [to Mount Sinai] by the extensive research experience of the program’s directors…their expertise and mentorship have been very beneficial for me.”

Read her story

Jeannys Nnemnbeng, MD, RRT, MSCR: On the Road to Becoming a Physician-Scientist With a Master of Science in Clinical Research

“I was looking for a program with a very specific focus on clinical research, and I knew Mount Sinai was top-notch, which meant I would have a very strong foundation for achieving my goal of becoming a physician-scientist in internal medicine.”

Read her story

 

 

 

Rosemary Espinal, BSN, RN: An ICU Nurse Enrolls in the Master of Science in Health Care Delivery Leadership Program To Bring New Perspectives to Patient Quality and Safety

“I want to use what I have learned to provide excellent care from a new perspective, address the disparities my mother faced as a non-English-speaking immigrant, and guide the next generation of nurses to high standards of quality and safety for our patients.”

Read her story

 

 

 

A Robust Immunotherapy Program and a Highly Collaborative Environment for Research Draws Matthew Brown to the Master of Science in Clinical Research Program

The potential to have a significant impact in improving patient outcomes and expanding the range of therapeutic options available to patients is what excites me.”

Read his story

 

 

 

Tina Aswani Omprakash: A Journey From Inflammatory Bowel Disease Patient, to Patient Advocate, to Master of Public Health Student

“I gained a knowledge base that expanded my understanding of the disease and gave me insights to approach public health not just from my own personal experience but from a broader health care perspective.”   

Read her story

 

 

 

When Omicron Struck, Mount Sinai’s Students Signed Up to Help

Arman Azad and Aliza Gross

Several days after Christmas, second-year medical student Arman Azad met with top administrators at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai to plan how he and fellow students could help the Mount Sinai Health System handle the crush of COVID-19 patients falling sick from the Omicron variant.

As co-leader of the Student WorkForce at Icahn Mount Sinai, Mr. Azad says his job involved “helping the Health System deal with the most severe bottlenecks, as cases rose and staff were in isolation, and then organizing students to address those needs.” He and his co-leaders worked closely with their deans to mobilize students for appropriate roles, ensuring they had the training and protective equipment needed to stay safe.

During this latest COVID-19 surge, 198 medical, PhD, and master’s students at Icahn Mount Sinai have logged roughly 5,000 hours performing various tasks. They have worked in the Emergency Departments at six of the Health System’s eight hospitals and have also helped run asymptomatic testing programs for staff in those locations. Students have assisted in the pop-up testing sites in the student resident hall. And at The Mount Sinai Hospital, which shares a campus with the school, they have delivered meals to inpatients and assisted in the urgent care center.

Their efforts represent the fourth wave of student involvement since Mount Sinai’s Student WorkForce was created in March 2020, at the start of the pandemic. Since then, the WorkForce has ebbed and flowed to meet the needs of Mount Sinai’s hospitals. Unlike in earlier waves, the students recently received an hourly wage for their work. Along the way, they have also honed their WorkForce model, sharing it with other schools and health systems throughout the country. Students published a paper about their contributions in June 2021 in Academic Medicine.

In addition to assisting staff, WorkForce members say the most gratifying aspect of their jobs is helping the patients who need Mount Sinai most. Many of Mount Sinai’s hospitals serve communities in New York City that have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic.

On New Year’s Eve, Mr. Azad worked in The Mount Sinai Hospital’s Emergency Department into the early morning hours, taking patients’ blood pressure and other vitals.

Calista Dominy and Brett Weingart

“It was a busy night and an opportunity to learn from experienced providers and offer relief to staff where I could,” he says. “The pandemic has brought to light many of the inequities in medicine, and Omicron only amplified that. For people who can’t access consistent primary care, the emergency room serves a critical role, one that was threatened by staffing shortages as COVID cases surged. I’m proud of my fellow students who did their small part to ensure the Hospital could continue providing care to those who needed it most.”

Shortly after recovering from COVID-19 herself, Calista Dominy—also in her second year of medical school—assisted in The Mount Sinai Hospital’s Emergency Department on New Year’s Eve, as well. Ms. Dominy says one of the things she loves most about Icahn Mount Sinai is its strong commitment to social justice and student advocacy.

“Working New Year’s in the emergency room is an experience I will never forget,” she says. “The Omicron surge brought many more patients through the doors on a night that is typically notoriously busy.”

Workforce member Jesse F. Mangold, who is a dual MD-PhD student with a specialty in microbiology, chose to deliver meals to The Mount Sinai Hospital’s COVID-19-positive inpatients.

Jesse F. Mangold

“Meal delivery may not be the first role that comes to mind when you think of a first responder, but it means a lot to patients who have reduced contact and need nutrition for recovery,” Mr. Mangold says. “There was this tremendous bottleneck because you couldn’t just enter their rooms with a tray. All of the safety precautions needed to be implemented. My task served two needs—to feed our patients and relieve our already taxed nursing staff.” Before he was able to enter a patient’s room, Mr. Mangold had to properly don his personal protective equipment and then properly doff it immediately after leaving.

In the Hospital’s kitchen, located in the building’s basement and through a labyrinth of hallways, Mr. Mangold worked alongside a staff member who was seven months pregnant. “She was putting the Hospital and its patients first and taking personal risks to bring meals to patients,” he says. “Every team member is essential. She is a health care hero.”

Second-year medical student Claire Ufongene helped Mount Sinai conduct asymptomatic testing of employees. “The asymptomatic testing program allows employees to regularly monitor their health and return to the hospital safely,” she says. “It’s been wonderful to work with members of the Mount Sinai community, including students and employees. I’ve been happy to contribute in a small way to facilitate a testing process that’s easy and accessible.”

Claire Ufongene

Early last year, medical student Aliza Gross became involved in addressing vaccine hesitancy and helping patients obtain COVID-19 vaccine appointments through the internet and their Mount Sinai MyChart apps. At Mount Sinai Morningside, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, she recently helped counsel patients entering the Emergency Department about the benefits of receiving a vaccine.

“It was very meaningful to have patient contact after spending so much of our medical school career remote,” she says. During the most recent spike, Ms. Gross took on the role of Student WorkForce co-leader and started taking shifts in the Mount Sinai Health System’s Express Care center—an urgent care facility—helping administer COVID-19 testing to sick patients. “It was gratifying to help our staff where they were experiencing the biggest backlogs,” she says.

Now that the worst of the Omicron wave seems to be receding, Mr. Azad says students remain ready to respond to future COVID-19 surges. “One lesson from the pandemic is that all of us, no matter our training or background, can in some way help protect our Health System and those we care for,” he says.

Pin It on Pinterest