UW School of Medicine Spokane Students Meet Their Match
Each Spring graduating UW School of Medicine (UWSOM) Spokane students join their peers from medical schools across the country in learning where they “matched” and will be spending the next three to seven years in U.S. residency training programs.
University of Washington medical students typically do very well in the annual Match Day event and this year was no exception. 50 UWSOM Spokane students matched into 13 specialties in 16 states. More than half matched into primary care specialties (Family Medicine, Internal Medicine, and Pediatrics), and nine students matched into Psychiatry residencies—a much needed specialty in Washington and across the U.S.
Six of the Spokane students matched into Spokane-based residencies, along with four additional students from the WWAMI region. 20 Spokane students in total matched into Washington State-based residency programs.
Students apply to residency programs at the beginning of their last year of medical school. In turn, residency program directors rank applicants. A match occurs when a program accepts a student’s application.
The increasing demand for physicians, coupled with dynamic changes in healthcare, underscores the timely need to find solutions that are cost efficient and leverage resources. Gonzaga University is the first private institution to join the UW School of Medicine WWAMI (Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho) program as a full partner. Working together, we are advancing a new model of institutional collaboration to benefit our students and the communities we serve.
WWAMI is an unparalleled regional medical education program spanning five states and was created to serve rural under-served populations. The program gives students residing in this five-state region access to high-quality, cost-effective medical education by decentralizing the educational process and sharing existing facilities and personnel in universities and communities in the WWAMI states. Support of WWAMI in Spokane by the State of Washington allows 60 qualified students to be admitted to the program each year.
The University of Washington School of Medicine - Gonzaga University Health Partnership is a medical school program, not a premedical program. Students are enrolled in the UW School of Medicine, and complete their Foundations Phase (the first 18 months) of medical school in Spokane. The Foundations Phase integrates basic science and clinical education, as well as rural training early in the curriculum. It is taught by Clinical Skills Instructors and Foundations Guides, both on the Gonzaga campus and in the community.
The WWAMI Medical Education Program, including the UW-GU Health Partnership, strives to attain two main goals: to make public medical education accessible to residents throughout the five states, and to encourage graduates to choose careers in primary care and family medicine and ultimately locate their practices in non-metropolitan areas of the northwestern U.S. Many of these areas lack an adequate number of primary care physicians and access to healthcare in general. Additionally, the program encourages talented students, especially minority students, in the WWAMI states to enter the field of medicine.
