Madison George saw her dreams come true on Friday, March 21 when she matched into the dermatology residency program at Trinity Health Ann Arbor Hospital — a pathway she hadn’t anticipated when first entering the doors of the Michigan State University College of Osteopathic Medicine.
A fourth-year Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine, or D.O., student, George matched into her residency during national Match Day and will enter that residency following her May 1 graduation from the MSU College of Osteopathic Medicine, after completing her intern year at the hospital.
When George first started at the MSU medical school, she wanted to focus her medical training in hematology/oncology by pursuing a residency in internal medicine, her plan since she could remember, due to her family’s health.
At the time she was applying to medical school, George said she shared a lot about her family in her personal statement. Her dad’s large family had lost their father, her grandfather, from pancreatic cancer when he was 60, she explained, and that drove her into medicine and the focus in hematology and oncology.
“I wanted to be an oncologist and treat patients like my grandfather,” she said was her thought when entering medical school. In fact, she began cancer research as an undergrad doing an internship at New York University (NYU), with the physician who studied genetic predispositions to these cancers, she explained.
“All of that is to say I wanted to continue pancreatic cancer research,” she said.
However, her focus and medical specialty trajectory would change with further family health issues.
Many in George’s family had been diagnosed with melanoma. A physician did genetic testing for the family, which came back positive for the CDKN2A mutation, which causes pancreatic cancer and melanoma.
George was among those in her family that received a melanoma diagnosis. In fact, in her first year of medical school, she was also diagnosed with a stage 0 melanoma on her leg. The mole was removed and the melanoma cut out. The dermatologist also suggested genetic testing, so she did the test.
“I have this mutation,” she explained. “They called me, and it was heavy information. In a way, it was comforting, though. There was peace in understanding why things were happening.”
Later, she had moles removed during skin checks, which she said were abnormal, but not cancerous. Then, there was something that came back as stage 1 melanoma. She had a skin check and surgery. Then she had a moment of realization.
“This was a time when I became more aware of my mortality,” George said.
She did what she knew best — researched to learn more. At the time, one of her friends asked her if she had ever considered dermatology as a specialty. That got her thinking.
So, she shadowed a dermatologist and fell in love with procedural and outpatient medicine. She spoke with other physicians and her mentor and then George pivoted her focus for medicine while in the beginning of her third year of medical school.
She talked with the physicians she had been working with about her idea to change focus, networked and got advice. She learned it would not be an easy road to change during the third year of medical school and while in clinical rotations, but she was given a list of things to do and spent the year checking things off that list. And she started applying for residencies.
“I basically spent my fourth year doing nine rotations in every corner of the U.S. for derm, to be all in,” she said.
Her journey through medical school to learning of her residency in dermatology has been a fast-paced life-changing moment. “I look at all these melanomas I had in some kind of karma way because I was meant to be a dermatologist,” George said. “I’m more empathetic; I can relate to them (patients). I will share. I have scars and they show.
“I’m turning my unfortunate circumstance into something positive.”
George joined her 2025 classmates at the MSU College of Osteopathic Medicine's celebration at the Suburban Collection Showplace for national Match Day on March 21. The class had a 98% match rate. Read more about Match Day here.
This story was originally featured on the College of Osteopathic Medicine website.
