As he finishes a night shift at University Medical Center, Osman M. Rahimi, DO, now a Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine at internal medicine resident, remembers how awestruck he was in 2019, how a thought came to his mind when he saw his fiancée walk down the aisle in her beautiful wedding dress.
What good thing in this life have I done to get this woman to say yes to me?
Dr. Rahimi’s wife, Saima Nur, DO, who’s also an internal medicine resident at the medical school, recalls how important it was for the both of them not to be in different parts of the country during residency training.
We can’t imagine not being together at such an important time in our lives.
That the young physicians – they attended California’s Western University of Health Sciences for medical school – are together today for residency, what administrators refer to as graduate medical education, is the result of successful participation in the Couples Match process run by the National Resident Matching Program.
The process, which sees students creating a ranked list of their desired training programs and training programs creating a ranked list of their desired applicants, culminates in Match Day, the third Friday in March (this year, March 17) when graduating medical students learn where they’re headed next. The “match” is determined by a Nobel Prize-winning computer algorithm that aligns each medical student's list with the preferences of the directors of residency programs. An already complex system becomes even more complicated when there's a desired “couples match,” but the system tries to accommodate them.
While graduates of medical schools have the title of doctors, they can’t treat patients on their own before spending — depending on their chosen specialty — three to seven years in residency training. During their fourth year of medical school, students enter the grueling process of applications and interviews with multiple residency specialty programs across the country.
“Match Day was an especially anxious day for us,” says Rahimi. “We did far more interviews than students who weren’t involved as a couple when we tried to match for residencies together. We’re so glad it worked out. It doesn’t always work out the way you’d like.”
Nur, a native of Southern California whose parents are physicians, still marvels at how her husband got to this time and place. He’s finishing his residency in June but is staying on for another year of seasoning at the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine after being selected as a chief resident.
“I feel that he has a truly inspiring story. He was born with congenital heart disease and underwent five open heart surgeries from birth until the age of 12," she says. "He hopes to pursue a cardiology fellowship with a specialization in adult congenital disease in order to give back to those who have helped him. He’s the first in his family to graduate from college.”
The couple met on their first day of medical school in 2016. “The rest, as they say, is history,” Rahimi laughs.
“My husband really stands out in a crowd,” says Nur, a Wellesley College graduate who is also finishing her residency in June and will work as a hospitalist at a local medical center while her husband is a chief resident. “He’s so positive, has such a positive outlook on life. His laughter is contagious…A few months after we met, we started dating and decided we were only for each other.”
Rahimi, who got down on one knee to propose marriage to his future bride in San Diego’s Balboa Park, can’t remember what he actually said on that day. “It’s all a blur,” he says.
What he can remember is how wonderful it is to have a spouse who understands the trials and tribulations of a career in medicine, a point of view seconded by his wife, who says she finds it difficult when she can’t see her husband some days because they’re working different shifts.
“When I had difficult days or bad patient outcomes, I knew I could come home to a loving partner in whom I could confide and release all of my internal struggles, “ Rahimi says. “She has been this amazing rock who has taught me to become more open about my emotional well-being. She allows me to become a better physician while also teaching me to be a better human being…She is so supportive, and she says I’m the same way.”
Born in New York state, this son of working class immigrants – his father sold second-hand items at swap meets and his mother worked in a movie rental store – moved to California with his parents and brother at the age of three. “My parents hoped the weather would help with my health — I was always getting pneumonia,” Rahimi says, noting that his parents immigrated to the U.S. after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979.
Though the resident physician now participates in virtually every activity — his cardiologist gave him the OK to go skydiving and counseled him to simply listen to his body and slow down when he felt very fatigued or short of breath — it wasn’t always that way.
As a teen, he was often held out of physical education classes as well as high school sports. School counselors, aware of his desire to become a physician, even suggested he should think about a less strenuous career than medicine.
“That really irritated me,” he says, admitting that what counselors had to say made him so unhappy that he began to ask “why me” and eat unhealthily. While doctors warned him that he could do damage to his heart by growing obese, they also told him there was no reason he couldn’t pursue a career in medicine.
The communication with doctors quickly got him to rid himself of a “poor me” attitude, and he recommitted himself to his studies at the University of California, Berkeley, where he would graduate magna cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in molecular and cell biology.
Medical school was next. After graduation, he took another step toward his dream of becoming a cardiologist, an internal medicine residency that is required before he can complete a cardiology fellowship. “In this next year as chief resident I expect to learn even more about internal medicine and more about teaching. I love academic medicine.”
Both Rahimi and Nur say their internal medicine residency at the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine, where they saw many COVID-19 patients, has allowed them to become more empathetic to patients from all backgrounds. While Nur plans on becoming a primary care physician or hospitalist, Rahimi says he’ll never let go of his desire to be a cardiologist.
“That’s where my heart is. I aspire to become a cardiologist because that community has provided me with so much throughout my life, from providing diligent care and education to inspiring me to pursue medicine in the first place. Having experienced the patient perspective first hand, I recognize the immense positive impact a health care provider can have on a patient, not only in a medical sense, but also emotionally. I hope that my personal experiences living with congenital heart disease can enhance my care as an internal medicine physician and cardiologist. I know my wife will help with that…My mom raised me to be the man I am and my wife is going to help make me into the man I want to become.”
