Urology students make an early match
Katherine Poulos and Avani Desai are part of a small group of medical students who already know what’s inside Match Day envelopes.
Urology is among a handful of residency programs that fall in the early match category, a month before the main U.S. residency Match Day on March 20.
Two current seniors, Katherine Poulos and Avani Desai, are early match students. They hope their opportunity to enter the historically male-dominated world of urology will catch the attention of other young female students.
A nontraditional path to urology
Poulos attended Carolina as an undergraduate, majoring in psychology with a minor in chemistry and economic justice. Then she obtained a master’s degree in physiology at NC State, worked as a surgical assistant for an oral surgeon and as a certified nursing assistant at a Raleigh area hospital before attending the UNC School of Medicine.
“I think it was such a good, rich experience to work with different types of patients, different types of medicine, and to get a little bit of academic enrichment, too, by doing the master’s program,” said Poulos.
Poulos first experienced how a urologist interacts with patients when her dad was diagnosed with prostate cancer, and she sometimes went with him to his doctor’s appointments in Concord, North Carolina.
“The coolest part was just seeing how their relationship grew over the years, from that early appointment where my dad was really uncomfortable, and then as he kind of loosened up and realized that he could really trust his doctor,” she explained. “I just think that’s a really special relationship.”
Poulos’ relationship with urology continued to grow after she entered medical school, where she learned about the specialty from some of the best women in the field.
“The department at UNC has some really amazing, very inspirational women in it, Dr. Kristy Borawski, Dr. Angie Smith, Dr. Katherine Chan,” Poulos said. “Just seeing them, how influential they are nationally, their department leadership. They’re so incredible.”
Poulos is headed to Portland for her urology residency at Oregon Health & Science University, living outside North Carolina for the first time. She wants to return to her home state someday.
“I would like to come back to North Carolina. I love Chapel Hill,” Poulos said. “I spent eight years of my life here. It’s an amazing place. It’s very bittersweet.”
From Chapel Hill to the Big Apple
Desai will complete her residency in urology at Columbia University in New York. Growing up in in Chapel Hill, she always wanted to be a doctor. Over time, experiences volunteering in hospitals, doing research and studying science and global health helped solidify that path.
“Service is really important to me,” Desai said. “I was drawn to fields where I could help people and on top of that, I loved science.”
Desai majored in biology at Duke University and, like Poulos, did other work before enrolling in the UNC School of Medicine.
“I worked as a health care consultant in Washington, D.C.,” said Desai. “That role helped me build strong research skills and better understand the business side of health care, particularly how there are so many stakeholders that shape the health care space and clinical practice.”
Desai wanted to choose a specialty that combined surgery and medicine.
“I really loved the broad scope of urology and the ability to impact patients across the spectrum of care, from complex oncologic surgery to meaningful quality-of-life interventions,” she said.
Desai often shares her experience studying urology with younger medical students and she encourages any who might be interested in it as a specialty to check it out.
“They should take initiative and explore it,” she said. “We don’t get a lot of structured exposure to urology, and it is such a great field.”
