Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine students celebrate the announcement of where they will be matched for their medical residencies. | Will Brown, Jacksonville Today
Published on March 21, 2025 at 6:07 pm
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Katherine Wang smiled once she saw she would remain in Jacksonville for the next few years.
Wang was one of 11 students in the Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine’s Florida campus who found out their destination for their medical residency on Friday afternoon.
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Wang will study dermatology at Mayo’s Jacksonville campus, a few miles from where she grew up at Naval Station Mayport.
This May, 12 students will graduate from Mayo’s medical school near the shores of the Intercoastal Waterway.
“Its definitely a lot of different emotions,” Wang said. “A lot of happiness and excitement and, also, thinking ahead about what the next steps will bring. Going to med school was such a big transition. Going to residency, I’m sure, will be a similarly massive transition for me. I’m very excited.”
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The third Friday in March is when soon-to-be medical school graduates across the country find out where they will spend as much as the next seven years working in the field as residents through the National Resident Matching Program.
Across Mayo’s campuses in Florida, Arizona and Minnesota, 87 students participated in Match Day.
Friday’s jubilant celebrations also illuminated a gap that legislators and think tanks have tried to close for years.
Florida produces far fewer physicians than other large states.
According to data from the Association of American Medical Colleges, between 2014 and 2023, 66.5% of the 11,447 doctors who conducted their residency in Florida practice here.
California (78.5%) and Texas (67.0%) not only train more physicians through residency programs, but both states retain a higher percentage of those doctors.
New York, the fourth-largest state in America, had the most residency positions in the country with more than 33,000. Its percentage of doctoral residents who remained in New York might be lower than Florida’s — at 56.4% — the number of physicians who remained in the Empire State, 19,014, is more than double the 7,610 who remained in Florida over the same 10-year period.
“Its such an honor for me to reach out to patients who are in need of medical care, of skin care, dermatologic care, especially in Florida where there are very high rates of sun exposure and skin cancer,” said Wang, who was born in Tampa and spent her formative years here. “I feel encouraged and excited to provide care to the patients who need it most.”
Friday’s Match Day marked the one-year anniversary of Gov. Ron DeSantis signing SB 7016. That bill made Florida the 40th state to join the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact. That alliance provided an expedited pathway for qualified physicians to practice in multiple states.
Where a physician will practice is years away. Dr. Courtney James-Newsome reminded the Mayo students on Friday minutes before they found out their matches that residency will push them in unimaginable ways. Exhaustion will be buoyed by “extreme fulfillment” as well as “the quiet victories that no one sees.”
Dr. Abba C. Zubair, dean of the Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine’s Florida campus, says the 11 students who were matched inside the Kenne Auditorium have completed the hilltop that is medical school. However, their professional marathon is far from complete, because there is never a finish line in medicine.
There is always more to learn.
Diana Hla is ready for those crests. She is one of the 11 medical school students who were matched on Friday.
“I feel like this profession is so rewarding,” said Hla, a native of Washington, D.C., who first visited Florida for her medical school interview. “The ability to help people and make a difference is really rewarding. My experience volunteering and shadowing showed me medicine is what I wanted to do with my life.”
While an undergraduate at Johns Hopkins, she started a podcast that examined health care inequities. She has also researched the financial system that underlies the medical system with a goal of financing health care in an equitable way.
Hla is open to working anywhere. Her time at Mayo has illuminated her to the possibilities of working in Jacksonville and Florida.
“There is strong evidence that shows medical students and residents tend to stay and build their medical practice where they train,” Zubair said in a statement to Jacksonville Today. “The medical school and residency training offered by Mayo Clinic in Florida will help to reduce the current and anticipated physician shortages, especially here in Florida.”
Across the St. Johns River, nearly 100 residents will complete the next step of their training at UF Health Jacksonville.
Dr. Elisa A. Zenni, the senior associate dean for graduate medical education within the University of Florida College of Medicine-Jacksonville, says UF Health Jacksonville will welcome 96 residents this summer, with nearly a quarter of them coming to the River City from medical schools in Florida.
“The state of Florida has worked hard to expand residency training positions and programs in the state, as we know that residency graduates are most likely to practice in the state in which they trained,” Zenni said in a statement. “Physicians who attended medical school and residency training in the same state are even more likely to stay after training.”
Farha Deceus earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Florida and was one of the 11 Mayo students who matched on Friday. The Lehigh Acres resident cried tears of joy at the thought of moving across the country for her internal medicine residency at Mayo’s campus in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Though she may be moving a few thousand miles away, Florida will always be home. The family members who endured health challenges was her motivation for becoming a physician. She plans to focus on nephrology — and become one of the approximately 10,000 physicians who study kidneys.
“I’m really honored that I can serve my future patients,” Deceus said. “Pursuing medicine is so all encompassing. I’m honored that I can be that physician who can support people in vulnerable times in their lives.”
