On National Match Day, 32 Temple-St. Luke’s Medical School students learned which medical residency programs they would be paired with in the United States.

Match Day, held March 17, is the day that fourth-year medical students across the country take a major step in their academic journey to become a physician.

“National Match Day, a milestone for every medical student across the country, is the day medical students learn where they will continue their medical training as residents,” said Dr. Joel Rosenfeld, MD, M.Ed, FACS, Chief Academic Officer, St. Luke’s University Health Network and Senior Associate Dean and Professor of Surgery, Lewis Katz School of Medicine.

“The Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University-St. Luke’s University Health Network is proud to have trained the graduating class of 2017, and we are extremely pleased with how well they matched.

“This is a tribute to their hard work over the past four years and to the excellent teaching, advice and counsel of our faculty,” Dr. Rosenfeld said.

Student Christopher Cann knew that Temple-St. Luke’s was the place for him to study medicine. The Liberty High School graduate left the area to receive a bachelor’s degree from the University of Maryland.

“I could not have been happier to come home to Bethlehem, the city that raised me,” Cann said.

His parents and the rest of his family still live here and though their support has been invaluable, he gets an additional boost from being able to give back to the community. He delivered a former teammate’s baby and has treated others who have also touched his life along the way.

Seven students, or 22 percent, of the Class of 2017 will continue their medical education in St. Luke’s Graduate Medical Education programs, according to Dr. Rosenfeld.

“I’m just so delighted after working with these students the past four years that they are well-placed with residency programs, and I look forward to seeing their growth into excellent, well-trained physicians,” Dr. Rosenfeld said.

Cann chose internal medicine as his specialty. “I want to be able to treat the whole patient, to show the compassion and empathy for what they are feeling and at the same time relate to him as a human being,” Cann said.

Janel Paukovits, 26, of Northampton has chosen emergency medicine as her specialty. She was a risk-taking child, she said, who was no stranger to the receiving treatment in the emergency room. “I hope I never forget what it’s like to be the patient,” she said.

Jay Fuletra, 25, of Bethlehem has chosen urology as his specialty because it combines his two passions: surgery and medicine. “My hope is that I never forget that there is a person, a family, behind every disease.”

The 2017 Temple-St. Luke’s class, will graduate May 12 at the Kimmel Center, Philadelphia. The medical school will welcome the incoming Class of 2021 in August for its White Coat Ceremony.