Match Day

You don’t have to walk far to run into a doctor at Heritage. Be it an ACHE faculty member, a student doctor, or one of the many guests that visit the campus, Heritage is home to a disproportionate number of healthcare professionals...and that’s just the way we like it. For many years, Arkansas, and our community in particular, has been in crisis with a shortage of medical professionals serving our population. This pressing issue in mind, the ACHE founders set out to create not only a college to cultivate top-notch doctors, but a place that those doctors could call home. At the center of Heritage, you’ll find the ACHE campus, both literally and metaphorically. So, it’s no surprise that when our ACHE students celebrate, we do, too!

For most of us, March 19th, 2021 is just another Friday in the spring. But for student doctors all over the country, the third Friday in March is one of the most important days of their career: Match Day. A quick google search, for those of us unapprised, describes Match Day as the term used in graduate medical education circles for the day that the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP) releases its results to applicants. Residency or fellowship training programs and student doctors are matched, and they find out their “doctor destiny,” as it is called by Kara Garvin in an article for University of Michigan Medicine.

Tomorrow, the dream moves one step closer to reality for many student doctors as they find out if they matched and if so, where they’re headed for their particular residency training. The day is as special and anticipated as it sounds—ARCOM has a formal setup to commemorate the occasion. Balloons, flowers, and fitted chair covers have all been carefully placed, as many wait with bated breath to say those magic words:

I matched!

While a great deal of us in the Heritage Community may not know intimately the time, energy, effort, and sacrifice required to become a great doctor, we can certainly understand the feeling of excitement as you see your goals fulfilled and your hard work pay off. To that end, we are steeped in anticipation for all of the wonderful things to come for the student doctors that have become neighbors and friends.

To every student doctor, we say that no matter where Match Day may take you or what it may bring, we are cheering for you, we are proud of you, and we know that your future is bright. We are all better off because of the dreams inside of you. Thank you for sharing your journey with our community.