Almost 30 years ago, Trine Engebretsen made history and national headlines as Floridas first liver-transplant recipient. On Friday, Engebretsen added to her pioneering life story as she joined 32 other Florida International University students in the schools first graduating medical school class.

With graduation only a month away, Friday was Match Day, an annual ritual that takes place simultaneously in medical schools around the country.

Each school structures its event differently, but the common thread is this: Match Day is when graduating med school students are paired with the teaching hospitals where they will spend the next few years as residents. Students publicly read their match aloud by opening an envelope during a ceremony that combines graduation day euphoria with Academy Awards-type suspense.

For FIU where hundreds of students, family members, and administrators gathered in a balloon-decorated auditorium it was a test of whether the brand-new medical school would be well received by the greater healthcare community. With FIU achieving 100 percent graduate placement (often with students landing their first or second choice), that answer was a resounding yes. When announcing their match onstage, students frequently thrust their hands in the air in celebration.

Nationally, about 93 percent of medical students land a Match Day residency.

For Engebretsen, it was the story of a life come full circle. It was while at FIU that the 31-year-old woman from Fort Lauderdale discovered she not only wanted to pursue a career in medicine, but she wanted to be a surgeon one day she plans to perform the same liver transplant operation that saved her own life as a child.

Im able to pay it forward and give back in a new way, and I really like that, Engebretsen said. She is headed to Medical Center of Central Georgia.

Her husband, Ryan, received a liver transplant in 2008. The pair met while serving as mentors for a website that counsels families affected by liver disease.

Nineteen months ago, Engebretsen gave birth to a son, Andersen. It was a high-risk pregnancy, and its success was noteworthy enough that the University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Medical Center held a news conference pronouncing him the first baby born to two liver transplant recipients.

FIUs 33 graduating students had a total of five babies while in med school, with a sixth on the way. Inexplicably, all the babies were boys another medical rarity. The chances of having six boys in a row are only about 1.5 percent, said J. Patrick OLeary, executive associate dean of clinical affairs for FIUs med school. But OLeary said it was the students strong academic performance as evidenced by their Match Day success that really stands out.

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