Thirteen medical students made history on Friday, March 16 when they were selected to fill the inaugural internal medicine residency class at Southeast Alabama Medical Center (SAMC).

The three-year accredited residency program is administered through SAMC’s Graduate Medical Education (GME) department. James C. Jones, DO, medical director of SAMC’s Emergency Medicine, is the Designated Institutional Official of GME and the residency program.

“We are very excited to have matched all 13 of our spots without help from the supplement match program (SOAP),” said Sebastian T. Tosto Jr., MD, SAMC residency program director. “We filled our program with the first 30 candidates on our rank order list. We are very pleased with the caliber of the 13 medical school graduates who will make up our first class.”

Dr. Tosto believes filling the 13 member class from the top 30 potential graduates on SAMC’s match ranking order is amazing. SAMC’s match ranking order list had more than 200 candidates on it. The SOAP is used to fill open residency spots with medical school graduates who didn’t receive an initial match.

Three of the 13, Victoria Cowan, Sheri Frickey and Ariail Gilbert Schmitz, will be graduating from the Alabama College of Osteopathic Medicine in the spring. The residency begins at SAMC on July 1.

The remaining residents are: Anjula Chib, Virginia; Arielle Dahlin, Florida; Michelle Ijaz, New York; Vyshnavi Kone, California; Livia Lozano, Florida; Sahar Mazhar, Alabama; Anastasia Novozhilova, Colorado; Avani Parekh, New Jersey; Stephanie Stalcup, Nevada; Hira Zubair, New York.

Dr. Tosto and his team were informed earlier this week that all 13 residency positions had been filled, but it wasn’t official until Friday at noon when students opened their letters of acceptance through the match process.

The match process is when residency candidates and residency programs across the nation “match” to fill first-year and second-year post-graduate training positions accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME).

The match is a standardized process that allows the students and participating residency programs to apply and complete the process at the same time.

“We are committed to our resident physicians’ professional and personal development while we ensure safe and appropriate care for our patients,” Dr. Tosto said. “Our resident physicians are supervised by experienced physicians, and play a valuable role in the inpatient and outpatient services at SAMC.”