Tower Health welcomes new medical residents
Health system fully matched its openings for residency program
Tower Health has once again fully matched the openings in its residency program and is preparing to add another 108 physician residents in 12 residency program across the health care system.
The residents will continue their graduate medical education as part of Tower Health training for another three to five years, depending on their specialties.
The first-year residents come from 63 medical schools across the U.S. and internationally. They will arrive for orientation in June and officially begin their training the first week of July.
The new class of residents will join programs at three Tower Health hospitals. At Reading hospital, residents will join programs that include anesthesiology, emergency medicine, family medicine, general surgery, internal medicine, neurology, OB/GYN, physical medicine and rehabilitation, and psychiatry; at Phoenixville Hospital, programs include internal medicine and psychiatry; and at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children in Philadelphia, the pediatrics program.
The new group brings to 300 the number of residents training across the Tower Health system.
Reading Hospital has a history of success in matching its residency openings with candidates, according to Dr. Wei Du, senior vice president, academic affairs, chief academic officer, and designated institutional official at Tower Health. That success continued once Tower Health was formed in 2017, and additional facilities were brought into the system.
“We brought in St. Christopher’s hospital, which had a very well established graduate medical education program there, and Chestnut Hill — their graduate medical education program was very robust as well,” he said, adding that new programs were added to the program, including psychiatry and internal medicine.
Du added that the success of this year’s match is a cause for celebration, but represents a lot of hard work by Tower’s residency programs including program directors, coordinators, faculty and residents.
“I think that we have positioned ourselves very well — not
only clinically speaking, but educationally as well,” Du said. “I want to emphasize that because the bottom line is we want to train the residents that will eventually serve our community will serve our area.”
“Adding this group of individuals, who come to us from medical schools across the country and around the world, helps to ensure we have a group of providers as diverse as the patients we care for,” P. Sue Perrotty, Tower Health president and CEO, said in a statement.
The process
Each new Tower Health resident physician — like the nearly 43,000 candidates who applied for more than 40,000 open residency spots across the country this year — found out whether and where they matched on the same two days in March.
Known as Match Week, it is the culmination of an application process that begins in the fall of an applicant’s fourth year in medical school.
On Monday of Match Week, March 13 this year, everyone found out at the same time whether they have been matched. And on Friday of that week, March 17, they found out where they are going.
Dr. Elise Heidorn is a third-year resident in the general surgery program at Reading Hospital who is about to be a fourth-year resident. Her residency program includes pediatric surgery rotations at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children.
Heidorn, a 2020 graduate of Drexel University College of Medicine, remembers her Match Week well.
“Exciting is one word for it for sure. You have a sense of relief on that Monday when you find out if you did match. Then the excitement and anxiety build up during the week,” she said, until that Friday when applicants find out where they will be training next.
“You could end up at your first choice or your 20th choice,” she added.
That is a simple explanation of what happens during the process.
The National Resident Matching Program is a 70-year-old organization that manages the national resident matching process.
It starts with fourthyear medical students or previous year graduates applying for openings via the Electronic Residency Application System, Wu explained, adding that programs around the country can post their programs and descriptions, how many positions and what positions are open.
“You look at all of the — for me all the general surgery residencies — in the country and decide what to apply to and you submit applications with letters of recommendations, your board score, grades,” Heidorn said.
Applications are submitted by mid-September, and the interview process runs from October to January.
Once applications are in, based on requirements and criteria, Du said, the programs select candidates to interview. The interview typically includes talking with faculty and current residents.
Once the interviews are completed, each residency program develops a rank order list of applicants. Applicants develop their own rank order list ranking the programs they think will provide them with the best opportunity to continue their training.
All those lists are sent to the National Resident Matching Program, which uses a mathematical algorithm to place applicants into residency and fellowship positions.
Why Tower Health?
Heidorn of Bethlehem said she attended Drexel College of Medicine before it opened a medical school in Reading, so she didn’t have a chance to do a med school rotation at Reading Hospital before joining the residency program.
She heard about Reading Hospital’s program from another resident who did a rotation at the hospital and suggested she apply. Heidorn’s interview was in person, but the interviews have since transitioned to virtual.
“From the second I walked into the building, everyone was so nice, and welcoming. You could tell they were excited to have us there. The general surgery coordinator was so welcoming and warm and has become like a second mom to all of us, and I got that feeling instantly when I met her,” Heidorn said, referring to Deborah Dreisbach, program manager.
She added that Dr. Kurt Bamberger, program director for the general surgery residency program, “was super enthusiastic about the program.”
She said it was the people and the environment that drew her to Reading.
“The facilities are amazing, and in terms of the breadth of what they offer a general surgery resident in terms of training, it was really appealing,” she said, adding that it’s also a smaller environment where everyone knows your name.
“From the people you get coffee from in the morning to your attending, people care about you as a person there,” she said.
Heidorn said she feels like she just completed the match process for Reading, and now is gearing up to start the process all over again to match for a fellowship.
“I am interested in trauma or transplant surgery, and am in the process of deciding which one I am going to apply for,” she added.
Attracting applicants
Du said moving to a virtual interview and recruitment process during COVID-19 was a new experience for almost everyone.
“It changes how we assess residents, and how the residents assess us,” he said.
Du said there are a number of university programs and health care programs that are competing for the same group of applicants in the region.
“The quality of the education program will be the ultimate determining factor for people wanting to join you,” he said. “You can do all the marketing you want to do. However, if you don’t offer what you promote you offer, nobody is going to come here. We’re dealing with medical students. They are highly trained, highly intelligent. They can tell.”
Du said Tower Health has a variety of methods to get the health system’s message out to potential applicants, including revising the health system’s outward facing graduate medicine education website “to accurately reflect what we do.” Tower has also hosted virtual open houses, which Du said generated interest in the program.