The new Obstetrical Emergency Department (OB-ED) and Hospitalist Program at ThedaCare Regional Medical Center-Neenah is now open, February 5, 2024. (Photo courtesy of ThedaCare)
GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) — For thousands of students across the country, the next step in becoming the next generation of doctors and healthcare providers began Friday; Match Day.
Every third Friday in March is Match Day, when newly-graduated doctors learn where they’ll be getting their hands-on residency training for their medical specialty.
Friday at St. Norbert College, two dozen Medical College of Wisconsin graduates announced their match in front of their friends, family, and fellow classmates.
“Right now I’m just excited,” says Laura Biesterveld of Appleton. “We’ll see if I get nervous in the next couple of weeks as things start to happen. Right now, it’s just pure excitement.”
Biesterveld got exactly what she was hoping for: a match in pediatrics with MCW at Children’s Milwaukee.
“Definitely a ton of butterflies, and it feels very surreal walking up the steps and grabbing that envelope. We worked so hard to get here over three years, yeah, just so surreal and so rewarding to finally have this culmination and match into residency,” Biesterveld adds.
Friday also marks the very first match day for ThedaCare in Neenah, which will soon be welcoming its first group of resident physicians in the new Graduate Medical Education (GME) program.
“They are a talented, vibrant, energetic group of physicians who are gonna come in and just bring in energy that residency programs bring to an organization,” says Paul Bergel, the founding program director for the internal medicine residency.
Fifteen residents were selected from nearly 2,000 applicants for the inaugural program. Organizers hope the new program will help address a shortage of physicians in Wisconsin and rural areas by keeping locally trained doctors.
“Recognizing that by training our own, developing them here in this community, there’s a greater likelihood for them to stay,” Bergel adds. “It also enriches the community by bringing in teaching programs that causes all of us to elevate our game. We have to make sure that we’re staying current, that we’re teaching current best practices.”
As part of the new GME program at ThedaCare in Neenah, 56 townhomes are being built as on-campus housing for residents in the program.
“I think a lot of us have used the word game changer when we heard about the resident housing being built. I mean, I think especially for people coming to a new community, not to have to go through the hassle of finding a new home. It speaks to the investment we’re making in their wellness that they’re able to come here and find housing that’s two to three minutes from this space where we are now, five minutes to most of their clinical work,” he says.
“It helps them establish a sense of community here as well right away, if most of them choose to live in these townhomes, they have their own little neighborhood.”
For doctors and programs across the country, match day is a milestone
“Lots of joy, lots of excitement, huge smiles,” Bergel says.
These doctors are beginning to paint the pictures of the rest of their lives.
“I’m hoping to be back in Appleton or the Green Bay area or someplace like it,” Biesterveld says. “I love working and learning here, and I think being an outpatient pediatrician here would be just so wonderful, and I think it would be really my goal in the next five years.”
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