Alumni share why they’ve made their career–and home–in Rhode Island
There’s a popular bumper sticker you’ll see on cars from Westerly to Woonsocket that says, “I never leave Rhode Island.” While that’s a poke at residents’ notorious disdain for driving longer than 15 minutes to get anywhere, many physicians who have trained here have fallen in love with the Ocean State—sometimes to their own surprise—and taken the informal motto to heart.
Many do their residencies or fellowships in Rhode Island and stay when they’re ready to enter into medical practice, while others come back after they’ve completed their training elsewhere. In fact, data from the Association of American Medical Colleges show that the longer a physician spends training in one place, the more likely they will settle in that state to practice. In 2018, nearly half of physicians who completed both undergraduate and graduate medical education in Rhode Island were still practicing here.
Whether students are from here and want to dig deeper roots, or they come for school and then are smitten with the area and the communities they serve, Brown is creating doctors to live in, and work for, Rhode Island. Here are the stories of six graduates: how they got to Brown, why they stayed, and how they are working to care for their neighbors.
