Matchmaking at Match Day ceremony

Match Day is when graduating medical students nationwide find out the residency programs they have “matched” into to continue their medical training.

Here are the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine’s (HWCOM) Class of 2015 results: 23 states, 52 institutions, 15 specialties, 2 marriage proposals.

Two marriage proposals?

It all started when HWCOM student Andres Rodriguez delayed opening the envelope that held his uncertain “match” – one made by a computer – to pursue that “perfect match” that had been made by his heart.

“I’m about to find out in a few moments where I will be,” he said up on the stage at the Graham Center Ballrooms in front of classmates, friends, family and faculty. “More important than that envelope is the woman holding that envelope.”

As he reached into his breast pocket for a little black box, Rodriguez fell to his right knee. “Will you marry me?” he asked girlfriend Meliza Frias. “Yes, of course,” she answered.

Frias, an FIU Law graduate who works with the Miami-Dade Guardian Ad-Lidem program, and Rodriguez are high school sweethearts who have been together nearly 12 years. Rodriguez matched into his first choice, the FIU/West Kendall Family Medicine Residency Program, making him a triple Panther since he also received his undergraduate degree in biology at FIU.

Not to be outdone, Casey Carr later proposed to his girlfriend Jessica in much the same fashion—on stage, in front of everyone, down on one knee. She too said yes. It was a banner day for Carr who matched into the Emergency Medicine Residency rogram at Johns Hopkins Hospital, one of the premier medical institutions in the country.

This year’s matches included programs at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Harvard Longwood Psychiatry, Vanderbilt University, LSU, Jackson Memorial Hospital, Cleveland Clinic, Miami Children’s Hospital, UF Shands Hospital, Rutgers, USC, Wake Forest, Baylor College of Medicine, USF, FAU, Tulane, Einstein/Montefiore Medical Center and Emory University.

In view of the continuing shortage of primary care physicians, HWCOM administrators are encouraged that 54 percent of the class opted for residencies in primary care fields: family medicine, internal medicine, obstetrics/gynecology, pediatrics, preventive medicine and psychiatry. Twenty-nine percent of the soon-to-be grads will be staying in Florida for their residencies, and of those, 22 percent will be continuing their medical training in South Florida. This is important for the tri-county area because studies show most doctors tend to establish their practice where they do their residency.