Being matched with your first choice for residency can be a dream come true for any medical student, but for one Connecticut woman, the moment was even more special. For Shay Taylor-Allen, learning that she would complete her residency at Yale Hospital was a homecoming – back to the place where she was born and where she once worked as a janitor.
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Unlike many medical students whose dream of wearing a white coat starts from childhood, Shay Taylor-Allen told ABC News that she found her passion later, while working at Yale Hospital as a janitor just after her high school graduation. When her mother was sick, the New Haven, CT native went to the hospital’s then-CEO, whose office was one of the spaces she cleaned, to ask for help. Seeing how the hospital worked to get her mother the treatment she needed inspired her to pursue a career in medicine.
Now, a student at Howard University College of Medicine, Taylor-Allen said getting the news that she would be returning to her hometown of New Haven for her medical residency after graduation was incredibly emotional.
“I was jumping up and down to the point I think the concrete was going to break,” she told ABC News in an interview.
Taylor-Allen, who is expected to graduate from Howard in May, shared her excited reaction to the news that she would be a resident in Yale’s Department of Anesthesiology on Instagram in a now-viral post that has received over 150,000 likes to date. Thousands in the comments shared their congratulations for a job well done.
“Incredible!! Can’t wait to read the book sis,” wrote someone.
Now, a young woman with a bright future ahead of her is ready to go back home to help the people of her community.
“I am still just feeling like I’m in a dream, because I could have never imagined that I’ll be going back to the same hospital I was not only born at, but a janitor at, to be a doctor for my community,” she said.
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