A Perfect Match: Doctors in the Making Learn Their Next Stop

Every year on the cusp of spring, thousands of fourth-year medical students across the U.S. receive the long-awaited news of where they will launch their careers as physicians. The third Friday of March, or Match Day, marks the end of months of interviewing for, then finalizing their preferred medical residency, internship, and fellowship programs.

This year, Tufts University School of Medicine students matched to medical institutions in 29 states. About 29% were matched in Massachusetts, 13% in California, another 13% in New York, and 21% matched with Tufts-affiliated hospitals. 

Here, four graduating medical students discuss what led them to pursue a career in medicine, the highlights of their medical school training, and where they will finally be able to utter the words, “I’ll be your doctor.”

Nicholas Verdini, M24, aspiring radiation oncologist

As an undergraduate at Emmanuel College, Nicholas Verdini, M24, had the misfortune of witnessing a best friend lose a child to cancer. The experience strengthened an existing interest in medicine, and upon graduation, led Verdini to complete a two-year stint as a research fellow at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). 

“There was the personal side of my desire to go into oncology,” Verdini says. “And then, it was my mentors at the NIH who really validated that I enjoyed oncology and caring for patients with cancer.” At Tufts, Verdini had the chance to briefly shadow a radiation oncologist, which helped further refine his goals. “I liked both that it’s very patient-centered—spending time with patients is important to me—and the fact that I’d be working with technology, using it to individualize treatment.”

Meanwhile, having lost a sister to opioid addiction, Verdini was instrumental during his first year at the School of Medicine in working to remove the Sackler family name from several Tufts buildings and programs. “The experience inspired me to become involved in other forms of advocacy and played a big role in my medical school journey,” he says.

Toward the end of Verdini’s third year, his father passed away. It was a harrowing time for the Massachusetts native, who then took a year off from Tufts to recenter and focus on research. As a radiation oncology clinical research fellow at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, Verdini worked on increasing patient enrollment for clinical trials in oncology, especially among people of color. The fellowship reinforced his enthusiasm for the field. “It seemed like every radiation oncologist I met was really happy and excited about their job,” Verdini says. “After my research year, I knew radiation oncology would be the right specialty for me.”

In the summer of 2020, Verdini, who is a Sam Ho Health Justice Scholar, led a study on the social determinants of health and their links between ethnicity and COVID-19, based on the demographics of Lynn, Verdini's hometown. The study found that Hispanic patients were nearly three times as likely to contract COVID-19 as non-Hispanics. “It was interesting to do a research project so close to where I grew up,” Verdini says. “Lynn is incredibly diverse, and being aware of some of the hardships patients were experiencing, it was very personal and an opportunity for which I’m grateful.”

His match: Stanford University. “I’m very excited and grateful to all the mentors I’ve had. Stanford is a pioneer in radiation oncology, and I’m looking forward to learning from the incredible faculty there.”

Shantiera Taylor, M24, aspiring general surgeon

One of the highlights of medical school for Shantiera Taylor, M24, has been the time she spent dedicated to community service. After her first year at Tufts, Taylor, who is from Chicago, applied to become a part of the school’s Health Care Alliance for the Homeless club, in which medical students join Boston’s Health Care for the Homeless Program to practice street medicine. Taylor worked closely with her mentor, physician David Munson, M09, to care for homeless patients, treating wounds, providing train vouchers, and administering antibiotics on the street. “I thought it was great to be able to dismantle those access barriers and decrease that power dynamic between provider and patient,” Taylor says. “Because a lot of the time, people are coming into an office that they're not comfortable in. Here, we were meeting them where they were.”

Assisting patients in a needle exchange program in response to a hepatitis outbreak was particularly illuminating for Taylor. “We had a lot of pushback from the community members, even from the government,” she says. “People thought we were promoting drug use. But our approach was, if you're going to use, we’d rather you do it with clean needles as opposed to reusing needles and increasing the risk of contracting diseases.”

A former kinesiology major at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Taylor is still fascinated by human movement and human anatomy. She plans to focus on general surgery during her residency. “I’m looking forward to being able to see a patient preoperatively and really understand their symptoms, to look at the anatomy and ask, ‘How can we make this person better?’” Taylor says. “Then to meet with them post-operatively and see them completely change, be free to do things they weren't able to do before, such as going back to work or cooking for family members, is so fulfilling.”

Continuing in the vein of service, Taylor is also the founder of the nonprofit Medical Student Doulas Program, which trains medical students to provide emotional and physical birthing support to patients at Tufts Medical Center. She is thankful to the Tufts community for providing full funding for the program. “This has been a truly rewarding experience, and I hope the program continues to elicit positive change. And over time, helps decrease maternal mortality.”

Her match: Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center. “I'm ecstatic. The opportunity to train within a program that serves the diverse communities I hold dear is truly a dream come true and an honor beyond words.”

Kali Sullivan, M24, aspiring obstetrician-gynecologist

Before enrolling in medical school, Kali Sullivan, M24, spent time working at a private practice in general surgery. She loved the work, but was soon surprised at the amount of waste she saw being created there. “A lot of my hobbies are around being outdoors, and many of my friends were environmental biology majors,” Sullivan says. “When I started working at the hospital, I was really impacted by how much waste was being generated. I started doing more research into health care’s impact on the environment, and also on how the environment impacts health.”

Sullivan, who grew up in Wilmington, Delaware, and graduated from Georgetown University with a B.S. in finance, became well-versed in the industry’s effects on the planet. “In a hospital, there’s so much focus on providing care that people don’t think about the indirect impact on the environment, which is hard to quantify. People are concerned about infection risk, even though various studies have shown that there are alternatives to single-use plastics.”

Hospitals themselves, she says, can be a significant greenhouse gas emitter, with buildings often being old and inefficient. “It’s the flip side of a system that supports people’s health, in that it can also be detrimental to it.”

Through an education intramural grant, Sullivan was able to teach her peers about the impact of health care on the environment. She has received a handful of awards for her activism, including, mostly recently, the U.S. Public Health Service’s Excellence in Public Health Award, which recognizes medical students’ contributions to the country’s fight against disease. On track to receive an M.D. and a Master’s in Business Administration upon graduating, Sullivan hopes to parlay her knowledge of health care law and policy into future meaningful action. “Over the long run, I’d like to continue to work and use my MBA in this sphere to try and ultimately improve health care systems, so that they can be more sustainable and have fewer health impacts on people.”

During a third-year rotation in OB-GYN, Sullivan stumbled upon her specialty of choice: obstetrics and gynecology. “I just fell in love with the patient population, and I liked that there was so much variety in the field: emergency medicine, surgery, primary care,” she says. “And generally, in my experience, it’s attracted pretty passionate and social-justice-oriented providers. There are so many avenues for advocacy.”

Her match: Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center. “I fell in love with the program at a pre-application info session, and I’ve been overwhelmed by the kindness and excitement from the residents there. I'm looking forward to meeting everyone in person and joining this wonderful community!”