Mark Your Calendar: Match Day 2017

Omar Mazher celebrates after opening his envelope at the USA College of Medicine Match Day in 2015. Match Day is the annual event in which future doctors across the United States and Canada simultaneously learn where they will be doing their residency training.

On March 17, 2017, senior medical students across the United States and Canada will find out this year’s Match Day results.

Locally, the University of South Alabama’s Match Day will be held at 10:30 a.m. CST on March 17, 2017, in the Grand Ballroom at the Mobile Convention Center at 1 South Water Street in Mobile, Ala. The envelopes containing Match results will be handed out to the students shortly before 11 a.m. CST followed by the students’ individual announcement of the location of their residency.

The National Residency Matching Program, or Match Day, is the annual event in which senior medical students across North America simultaneously learn where they will be doing their residency training.

The Match process works like this: after interviewing with different residency programs - both near and far - students provide a ranking of their top-choice programs in order of preference. The training programs, in turn, rank the students who interviewed. Students are then matched based on a mutual ranking with a specific residency program.

The NRMP matches applicants’ preferences for residency positions with program directors’ preferences for applicants. Each year, thousands of medical school seniors compete for approximately 24,000 residency positions across the United States.

Match Day results for USA students will be tweeted live on the USA College of Medicine Twitter page found here. There will also be updates on the USA College of Medicine Instagram page found here and the Facebook page found here. Plus, we'll have a live video feed available at http://bit.ly/usa-match-day.

Share your own posts and photos using the hashtags #USAMatchDay, #Match2017 and #imatched.

Pediatrics Hosting Grand Rounds Next Week

Dr. Charles Hartin, associate professor of surgery at the University of South Alabama College of Medicine and a pediatric surgeon with USA Physicians Group, will present “Pediatric Biliary Surgical Considerations” for February’s pediatric grand rounds.

The event will take place Friday, Feb. 17, 2017, from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. in the Atlantis Room in the CWEB-2 building behind USA Children’s & Women’s Hospital.

Dr. Hartin will discuss the anatomy, congenital malformation, signs and symptoms of biliary dyskensia in pediatric patients. He will also review current literature for biliary dyskinesia.

The event is open to faculty, staff and students at USA. A light breakfast, coffee and beverages will be provided. For additional information, contact Katie Catlin at kncatlin@health.southalabama.edu.

USA Welcomes Dr. Charles Hanes

Dr. Charles R. Hanes recently was appointed adjunct assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of South Alabama College of Medicine and will serve as a urogynecologist with USA Physicians Group.

Dr. Hanes will teach and practice urogynecology, which is the study, diagnosis and treatment of disorders of the female pelvic floor. It is also referred to as female pelvic medicine and reconstructive surgery. He became board certified in urogynecology in 2012.

Prior to joining USA, Dr. Hanes served as the medical director of the Continence Center of Mobile and as Director of Urogynecology of Southern Alabama. He has practiced obstetrics and gynecology for more than 30 years.

Dr. Hanes earned his medical degree from Tulane University Medical School in New Orleans. He completed postgraduate training in general surgery at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., and his residency training in obstetrics and gynecology at Emory University in Atlanta.

Dr. Hanes is a fellow of the American College of Obstetrics & Gynecology and member of the American Urogynecology Society and the Society of Gynecologic Surgeons. His research in obstetrics, gynecology and urogynecology has been published and presented extensively.

Dr. Hanes will see patients at the USA Health Strada Patient Care Center. For more information about the USA Health Strada Patient Care Center, click here. To make an appointment with Dr. Hanes, call (251) 415-1496.

USA Chapter of Gold Humanism Honor Society to Focus on Compassion

University of South Alabama College of Medicine Gold Humanism Honor Society members participate in last year's Solidarity Week at USA Children's and Women's Hospital Feb. 15, 2016.

In honor of the Gold Humanism in Medicine Honor Society's (GHHS) Solidarity Week for Compassionate Patient Care Feb. 13-17, the University of South Alabama College of Medicine chapter of GHHS will participate in several activities to remind students and employees of the importance of compassion in medicine.

“Solidarity Week gives us the opportunity to get to know our patients outside of the scope of their illness,” said fourth-year medical student Emily Spurlin. “As medical students it is easy to focus solely on the patient's disease process, but I think good doctors treat the patient as a whole, taking into consideration the patient's experiences and values when crafting a diagnostic and treatment plan.”

This year during Solidarity Week, GHHS students will once again participate in Tell Me More, a program that helps the entire health care team learn more about their patients. After obtaining consent, GHHS members will ask patients three non-medical questions about their lives in order to craft signs for display over their beds. The signs will serve as a reminder to all care providers that every patient is more than just a diagnosis.

“My favorite part of Solidarity Week is making the individualized posters,” Spurlin added. “They allow health care providers to connect with patients in a more meaningful way.”

GHHS members will also hand out candy and stickers to hospital staff during Solidarity Week to thank them for their hard work and compassion.

The national Gold Humanism Honor Society office established National Solidarity Day for Compassionate Care in 2011 to highlight the nation-wide movement promoting provider-patient relationships based on caring, personalization and mutual respect. Momentum gathered particularly after the Senate passed a resolution in 2013 and 2014 to officially recognize Solidarity Day on the national calendar, and it is now typically celebrated on or around Valentine’s Day. In 2016, many chapters celebrated a week of events instead of just one day.

The senior medical students of the USA chapter of GHHS are Corwin McGee, Brian McGrath, Kiyoshi Scissum, Jelaina Scott, Jacob Sexton, Peter Soh, Emily Spurlin, Meagan Thomas, Carter Tisdale and R. Grant Willis.

To learn more about Solidarity Week, visit http://www.gold-foundation.org/programs/ghhs/ghhs-solidarity-day/ .

Feb. 9 DSS to Feature Dr. Robert Sawyer

The next Distinguished Scientist Seminar at the University of South Alabama College of Medicine will feature Dr. Robert Sawyer, professor of surgery and public health sciences at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Va.

The lecture, titled "Age and Gender Differences in Response to Trauma and Critical Illness," will take place Feb. 9, 2017, at 4 p.m. in the first floor auditorium of the Medical Sciences Building on USA's main campus.

Dr. Sawyer earned his medical degree from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Mich., and completed his residency training in surgery at the University of Virginia. He completed a fellowship in surgical infectious disease at the University of Virginia and a fellowship in transplant surgery at the University of Michigan.

The lecture series is comprised of distinguished scientists from other academic institutions who are invited by the USA College of Medicine basic science departments to present a seminar showcasing their latest research findings. Faculty, staff and students are strongly encouraged to attend.