Match Day Profile: Majd Bassam Aboona

Every third Friday in March, fourth-year medical students across the United States learn where the next chapter in their careers will be written. Match Day is the day when the National Resident Matching Program releases results to applicants in sealed envelopes, revealing where they will spend the next several years in residency, training in their chosen specialty. After years of preparation and study, it is a long-awaited and well-deserved day to celebrate. The University of Arizona College of Medicine – Phoenix is profiling several students for Match Day 2023.

Meet Majd Bassam Aboona

Majd Bassam Aboona was born in Kirkuk, Iraq, and moved to the United States when he was just a few years old. He grew up in Las Vegas, Nevada, and majored in biology and minored in business administration at the University of Nevada – Las Vegas.

He credits his parents as his biggest supporters. They have always pushed him to achieve his dreams and have been an amazing support system to have during medical school. He is extremely grateful for them.

Path Toward Medicine

What was the spark that led you to become a physician?

The first spark that led me into medicine was my pediatrician when I was a child. The kindness, patience and compassion I saw from him ignited my devotion to medicine. In college, while volunteering in the hospital and shadowing physicians, I saw the impact that I could have on someone else’s life, and this made me want to pursue medicine.

Choosing a Specialty

Do you have a specialty? What is it and why did it interest you, or what led you to it?

I plan to match into internal medicine with the hopes of pursuing a fellowship in gastroenterology and maybe an advanced endoscopy fellowship afterward. The patients that I met during my internal medicine rotations, the physicians I worked with, and the diversity and complexity of the field made me want to pursue internal medicine.

What’s Next

Post-Match Day, what are your goals moving forward?

I would love to take a vacation before starting my residency, knock some more restaurants off my list and catch some concerts.

The College of Medicine – Phoenix Culture

What will you miss most about the College of Medicine – Phoenix? Any advice for incoming medical students?

The thing that I will miss the most about College of Medicine – Phoenix are the people. My friends and all the memories I have made with them will last a lifetime.

The advice I have to incoming medical students would be that although medical school can be a challenging time, remember to take a pause. Take the time to have fun with your friends, see that movie, have that nice dinner, go to that concert.

While medical school was a very busy time in my life, it was one of the best times in my life. Study hard but remember to have fun!