A group of graduates from a Caribbean medical school are about to make a big impact on the medical landscape of the borough.
This year St. George’s University School of Medicine in Grenada is sending 21 graduates to residencies, or post-graduate training, at three local hospitals in the borough.
The graduates are headed to Bronx Lebanon Hospital, Lincoln Medical Center, and Montefiore Medical Center – Albert Einstein College of Medicine, said Dr. Richard Liebowitz, St. George’s University vice-chancellor.
They will be doing their residencies in pediatrics, surgery, psychiatry, internal medicine and emergency medicine, said Liebowitz.
The students were matched with the hospitals where they perform their post-graduate medical training by a computer ranking system based on their own preferences and the preferences of the hospitals.
This means that many of the young doctors headed to the borough selected the local hospitals where they will work, said Liebowitz.
“The students put in into their ‘rank order lists’ places where they are happy to train,” said Liebowitz. “So the 21 people who have matched to the Bronx are probably going to be very happy.”
Most of the students at the college’s medical school come from the United States originally, said Liebowitz, but like the borough, they are also from a diverse group of countries as well.
The college has a long history of matching students to borough hospitals, particularly to Lincoln Hospital, said the vice-chancellor.
The fact that borough hospitals took so many new residents from St. George’s speaks well of the school, the vice-chancellor believes, saying that it shows graduates of the school have been reliable.
He said he believes a lot of students chose to work in urban environments like the borough where there are sometimes higher levels of poverty, because of their strong commitment to social justice.
One of the young doctors matched to Lincoln Hospital, Nick Romagnoli, who is about to graduate from St. George’s University School of Medicine, said that he was impressed by Lincoln’s Emergency Department when he spent a month there in August 2018 during medical school. Romagnoli, who is originally from the Washington D.C. area, will be doing his residency in emergency medicine at Lincoln.
Romagnoli said his experiences at Lincoln Emergency Department and elsewhere drew him to specialty.
He said he was especially impressed by the camaraderie amongst the residents at the Melrose-based hospital.
“Everybody was friendly, welcoming and willing to help. It felt like a true team effort there and I knew I would be happy (at Lincoln),” said Romagnoli.
The future Lincoln resident and soon-to-be M.D. said he is especially happy to train at Lincoln because it is a Level 1 trauma center, the highest designation of trauma treatment.
“It is a great place to train because being in the south Bronx….you get to see this incredible display of diseases and trauma,” he said. “So, as far as emergency medicine goes, it is one of the best places to train.”
Reach Reporter Patrick Rocchio at (718) 260–4597. E-mail him at procc
