UNE medical students celebrate residency matches in Portland for the first time

Nearly 170 graduating doctors from the University of New England gathered on the University’s Portland Campus for the Health Sciences on Friday, March 21, to learn where they will begin their medical residencies next year. This year’s Match Day, as the event is known, was particularly significant as the first Match Day held on UNE’s Portland Campus, a milestone in the ongoing relocation of Maine’s only medical school from Biddeford to Portland.

Match Day is a defining moment for medical students nationwide, as they open envelopes at precisely noon revealing their residency placements. Students in UNE’s College of Osteopathic Medicine celebrated their achievements and the next step in their medical careers surrounded by family, faculty, and peers.

UNE’s residency match rate continues to outrank national residency match rates. This year, 98.4% students successfully matched to residency programs, surpassing national averages for both allopathic (93.5%) and osteopathic (92.6%) medical schools.

A strong emphasis on primary care remains a hallmark of UNE’s medical school, with 50% of students matching into primary care fields, including family medicine, internal medicine, pediatrics, and OB-GYN. UNE students also secured placements in high-demand specialties such as surgery, dermatology, and emergency medicine.

Regional retention of UNE graduates continues to strengthen Maine’s and New England’s health care workforce. Fifty-two percent of students matched to residency programs in New England, and 15% of students — a total of 27 — will complete their residencies in Maine. Historically, UNE has seen 57% of its students who complete their third-year clinical rotations in Maine return to practice in the state after residency.

The College of Osteopathic Medicine is Maine’s only medical school and the premier educator of physicians for the state.

The transition of UNE’s medical school to the Portland Campus for the Health Sciences, set to be completed this July, is part of a larger effort to create a fully integrated, interprofessional health sciences education environment. The move will unite Maine’s only medical school, the state’s only dental college and programs in physician assistant studies and doctorate-level pharmacy with nationally ranked programs in nursing, physical therapy, occupational therapy, social work, and more.

This innovative model of interprofessional education has been shown to enhance collaborative care and improve patient outcomes.

UNE is also expanding its medical school enrollment from 165 to 200 students per class to help address the growing shortage of physicians, eventually adding 35 more trained physicians to the workforce each year.

Vincent Buonocore, M.Ed., associate dean of Recruitment, Student, and Alumni Services in the College of Osteopathic Medicine, said this kind of interprofessional training only enhances students’ ability to work collaboratively with their peers across the health care system — just as it has for the Class of 2025, he said.

“I have the utmost confidence that residency program directors across the country will be receiving medical graduates who are prepared, resilient, and ready to make an impact, thanks in part to the world-class interprofessional education they’ve received at UNE,” he remarked.

In addition to its leadership in collaborative health education, the UNE College of Osteopathic Medicine  is also included in U.S. News & World Report’s “Best Medical Schools for Research,” boasting nationally ranked research opportunities supported by — among other sources — the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation on studies of pain and infectious disease, osteoporosis, cell signaling, biotechnology, and more.

Learn more about UNE’s robust leadership in the health sciences.