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UCF medical student Zachary Self hadn’t decided on a specialty for his medical career – until he cared for patients at the Orlando VA Medical Center.
“I got the privilege of meeting a couple World War II vets, who had all sorts of health problems that were unique to that population. I saw a patient exposed to a significant amount of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War,” he said. “They were also some of the most grateful patients that I’ve ever had.”
Those experiences inspired Self to enter the U.S. Army and seek an internal medicine residency at a military hospital. As Match Day 2025 approaches on Friday for more than 30,000 medical school seniors nationwide, Self already knows where he will be doing his graduate medical education training – Fort Eisenhower, an Army Installation in Augusta, GA.
The Health Professions Scholarship Program pays for a year of medical school in exchange for one year of service as a military physician. Most medical students begin their military affiliation early in their schooling to reduce medical school debt. Self decided to enlist after seeing the health issues veterans experience because of their service.
“A lot of the veterans have chemical biologic exposures that lead to a lot of health problems,” he said, “so I want to educate the patients on symptoms of these things so they can get the help they need.”
M.D. graduates cannot practice medicine until they finish a residency in their specialty of choice. Such training, called graduate medical education (GME), lasts three to seven years depending on the specialty. Students interview with residency programs during their fourth year of medical school and list their top choices. Residency programs do the same. A computer then matches the lists. Most residency matches are kept secret until noon EST on the third Friday of March. Military officers and students seeking several specialties go through an early match process. In addition to Self, three other UCF medical students matched early into residency programs:
Abigail Miller matched into ophthalmology at Louisiana State University. She loved science and was considering becoming a Ph.D. but decided to become a physician after working in hospice care. “I was working with a patient who had advanced dementia and she was at the point where she wasn’t fully aware of what was going on,” Miller said. “I ended up spending a lot of time with her son while taking care of her. Years later he wrote me a letter saying that she passed, but spending time with him made him feel like he had support.”
Aliya Centner, who joined UCF’s medical school alongside her twin sister Safia, will be training ophthalmology at the University of Kentucky, where her parents did their medical school training. Her twin learns her residency match on Friday. “The true impact that we can have on patients’ lives and knowing that we are really serving a person’s life is what draws me to medicine,” she said.
Shirley Ke will do her military general surgery residency at Naval Medical Center Portsmouth in Virginia. She is graduating from medical school the same year her brother graduates from the U.S. Air Force Academy. “My parents immigrated to the United States which opened up many opportunities for my younger siblings and I,” Ke said. “I saw medicine as a chance to give back to the community that protects our country and to serve others through humanitarian efforts.”
Self is the first in his immediate family to enter military service. His father, Dr. William Self, is a researcher in microbiology, who serves as a professor of medicine at UCF and former UCF Trustee. Father and son often share their perspectives on improving healthcare.
“The crossover is cool. He works a lot with C. diff, a hospital-acquired bacterium that leads to infection, which is one of the big bad demons in medicine,” said the younger Self, “So we are always looking for new treatments and preventatives for it.”
Dr. Jeff LaRochelle is associate dean for academic affairs at the UCF College of Medicine, an internal medicine specialist and a career Air Force officer. He will present Self and Ke with their promotional military ribbons when they graduate on May 16. He spoke with Self about his dreams of a military career after the student cared for veterans during his third year of medical school.
“Physicians emulate a life of service which is in direct alignment with our veterans’ life of service and sacrifice to a greater cause,” Dr. LaRochelle said. “ I have often been asked if I considered myself more of an Air Force officer or more of a physician, and my answer has always been the same: ‘The tenets of integrity, service and excellence are the same for both.’ From that perspective, it is not at all surprising that medical students may be drawn to the life of service in the military in the same way they were drawn to the life of service as a physician.”
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- Match Day 2025