POSTED: Wednesday, March 27, 2013 - 8:00pm

UPDATED: Wednesday, March 27, 2013 - 8:14pm

Longview, TX (Good Shepherd Medical Center) The Internal Medicine Residency Program at Good Shepherd Medical Center, sponsored by the UT Health Northeast, is pleased to announce that the next 18 candidates have been selected and matched and will be joining the East Texas community this summer. The National Resident Match Program conducted its yearly match services last week, and on Friday, March 15, the second class of interns at the UT/GSMC Program were officially announced.

This years class is representative of US medical school graduates, US international medical graduates and international medical graduates, as listed specifically below:

Hana Altwal, MD University of Jordan Madhavi Annakula, MD Gandhi Medical College Leon Chen, DO UNTHSC TX College of Osteopathic Medicine Maria Chiejina, MD Igbinedion University Suyao Huang, MD Chicago Medical School at Rosalind Franklin University Ruth Jackson, MD UT San Antonio Jeffrey Kemp, MD UT Houston Zahi Merjaneh, MD University of Aleppo Nithin Nayini, MD St. Georges University Curtis Okpara, MD Ross University Yetsy Olusanya, MD Texas A&M Health Science Center Justin Oring, DO West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine Nadia Siddiqi, DO Des Moines University College of Osteopathic Medicine Mohammed Suhail, DO UNTHSC TX College of Osteopathic Medicine Carmen Tran, MD Ross University Jessica Vazquez, MD UT San Antonio Kyle Willingham, MD Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center Sudha Yanamandra, MD Guntur Medical College

We are very thankful to have received such a well-educated group of interns, said Dr. Emmanuel Elueze, Program Director for the Internal Medicine Residency Program. Already in the second year, we have become a highly-competitive program. We received more than 1,800 applications and had to narrow that down to 200 candidates to interview. We were successful in achieving our goals to attract and obtain high quality candidates with close ties to Texas, meaning that we will hopefully retain them as primary care givers in Texas after their training.

Ken Cunningham, interim chief executive officer for Good Shepherd Medical Center, said that this upcoming class proves that the program is headed in the right direction. Most of the candidates that we interviewed this year were US medical graduates, with a large percentage of them from Texas. The goal of our program is to train and keep primary care providers in Texas and going into our second year, we are on the right path.

The new interns will begin program orientation on June 17, and their first day of rotations will be Monday, July 1. The current class of interns will move to second-year residents and will act as upper-level supervisors to the interns, with the assistance of the current medical staff who act as attending physicians in the program.

The program will begin to receive applications for the 2014-2015 academic year in September, and interviews for the third class of residents at Good Shepherd Medical Center will be conducted from November to January. The program match occurs each March for the next academic year. The academic year runs from July to June.

If you would like more information on the UT/GSMC Internal Medicine Residency Program, please visit http://www.gsmc.org/residency. In addition to the incoming interns, a new class of third-year medical students will begin in July as well. Good Shepherd will welcome 12 students who will reside in Longview for the academic year and complete their third-year clerkships, which include internal medicine, family medicine, surgery, psychiatry, osteopathic manipulative medicine, obstetrics/gynecology and pediatrics.

Read more:

2013-2014 Interns named for GSMC Internal Medicine Residency Program