Fourth-year medical student featured in AAMC News
AAMC News interviewed seven graduating medical students who applied to The Match® this year about how their rural backgrounds challenged and inspired them on their paths to becoming physicians. Among the students who shared their perspectives was Jonathan McCann, a fourth-year student in NEOMED’s College of Medicine.
McCann grew up in rural Greenup County, Kentucky. He worked a variety of jobs – from hanging dry wall to installing cable television – and supported his wife through veterinary school before attending college and medical school himself. He told AAMC News that his rural upbringing gives him an advantage in working with rural patients.
“If they know me, know where I’m from – they can see that I don’t live in a mansion – they can learn to trust me,” he said in the AAMC interview. “You can’t take people from metropolitan areas and force them to integrate into a rural community. If you want rural physicians, you need to take people from rural areas and make them physicians.”
McCann will complete his residency in family medicine at Mercy Health - St. Elizabeth Health Center in Boardman, Ohio.