Medical student Matthew Hutchens commits to serving NC
The Community Health Training Program is helping his dream of becoming a rural family medicine physician take shape.
Editor’s note: Matthew Hutchens matched with UNC Hospitals on Match Day.
UNC medical student Matthew Hutchens understood the significance of service to the state as an adolescent. He found his love in medicine though his mom, who was a pharmacist. In addition to that, he also learned that building relationships within a small rural community is very rewarding and that it was important to pay it forward.
“There were many older men from my community that really fed into me and made me who I am today,” said Hutchens. “The least that I can do is go back and help them this way and feed back to them.”
Born in Lee County, Hutchens always knew he wanted to return home to practice medicine. When applying to medical school at UNC, he was already aware of the Community Health Training Program.
Benefits of the program involve students who will do most of their clinical experiences in their selected specialty and at the location of their residency program. This allows the students to form relationships with the doctors before they even become residents, as well as learn how that residency location operates.
Once Hutchens entered the Community Health Training Program, his dream of becoming a rural family medicine physician began taking shape.
“Once I figured out I wanted to do medicine, the program was really set to where I wanted to be,” he said. “It envisioned everything that I wanted to do with my future career. Just being able to give me the opportunity to get there a little bit quicker. It shined.”
Working in rural communities offered Hutchens the chance to form personal, lasting connections — one of the main reasons he feels called to serve. Through the program, he experienced firsthand how to address his patients’ most critical needs while building trust.
“While working in Chatham County with my preceptor, I was able to see the same patient a couple of times,” he said. “Just to have the continuity with them, dealing with their chronic diseases, and seeing the ’wins and losses’ of their health pushed me to be their advocate. It gave me a sense of an accomplishment to be able to own that.”
Family medicine involves lifelong care by treating patients of all ages and addressing a wide range of health needs — a specialty that leads Hutchens to caring for the whole person. From inpatient medicine to different procedures, he discovered how essential family physicians are in rural areas.
“I never realized how much I could do in family medicine until I got into the program,” he said. “I think you can have a wide scope of practice as a family medicine physician, and you can offer a lot of different treatments. Specialty care can be hard to find in rural areas, and some patients may have difficulty with transportation, or they may have difficulty with finances. So, if I’m able to offer that for patients, I think that is one step closer to bridging the gap for health care for rural patients.”
As Match Day marches closer, Hutchens is committed to service to the state after learning how to provide the best care through the Community Health Training Program. It’s an experience that deepened his appreciation for the role family medicine physicians play at the intersection of medicine and community service. He says this rural setting offers a new perspective where future medical students can see themselves making a profound impact on communities while offering compassionate, effective care.
“That’s one of the reasons that I feel drawn to be able to go back to my hometown, to take care of people that I’ve known my whole life,” Hutchens said. “I’ve always thought that it was my service to go back and work in Lee County. Because we can prescribe medications to patients. We can talk to them until they’re blue in the face, until I’m blue in the face. But, if there’s not trust involved, sometimes it’s just words at the end of the day. That’s what I really want to embody, especially when I’m out practicing in my future career.”
