'By all measures, I was never supposed to become a doctor.'

Uriah Chapman didn’t think this moment would arrive: the week he graduates from medical school. “By all measures, I was never supposed to become a doctor.”

 

But the Columbia native has become one, earning his medical degree from the Medical University of South Carolina. And not only that – he has done it in three years instead of the usual four. “I'm very, very, very thankful for the Lord and the people who helped me to get to this point.”

Some of those people are at MUSC. Like Aundrea Loftley, M.D., an associate professor of Medicine/Endocrinology. “Uriah has never looked at his life experiences as obstacles but instead as building blocks that have prepared him for this moment.”

And Myra Haney-Singleton, associate dean for Student Affairs and Student Wellness in the College of Medicine. “Uriah is a person of integrity, goal-oriented and an excellent collaborator. As a result of his upbringing, he was taught the importance of demonstrating a strong work ethic, respect and compassion to all. His journey to answer his call to medicine is remarkable and truly inspiring.”

 

His supporters at Radiant Church in North Charleston, where he’s a member, have been behind him as well. “We say that we're not like a family. We are family,” said lead pastor Walter Belton. “What I’ve loved about him since day one is that he has humility. He is a bright young man, but just a sweet spirit.”

Maintaining that sweet spirit through serious hardship couldn’t have been easy. But Chapman isn’t one to complain. He is, however, one who’s comfortable sharing his remarkable story. 

That story began, during an interview, with these words: “I would like to tell you a little bit about my background. Why I felt like just getting to medicine, in general, was not really in the cards for me,” he said.

 

What followed was an account that was both heartbreaking and inspiring. First came the heartbreak and the hardships that followed it. As a teenager, Chapman got a difficult lesson in loss.

“When I was 16, my mother passed away unexpectedly from an overdose. She had been battling with a drug addiction for several years after the loss of my younger brother, who was premature. And after she passed, my stepdad got married and moved away, and all my siblings and I were split up.”

That stunning series of events left Chapman not only in mourning for his mother and shocked by the loss of his family – but also alone. “She passed in September. By December of 2015, I was living by myself in Columbia. The school gave me a social worker. My stepdad signed over his parental rights, and I became an unaccompanied youth when I was 16.”

 

Unaccompanied, but fortunately, not unnoticed. Members of Chapman’s church came together to support the smart, well-liked young man. So did people from his school, Ridge View High School. “They lifted me up and kept me on the right path. Teachers stepped up and basically became like godmothers to me. They saw me struggling, and they carried me the rest of the way. So I can't tell my story without honoring them.”

Another important source of support that gave Chapman some grounding: a friend and his family. They took him in to live with them while he finished high school.

Thanks to a multilayered support system, along with the strength he drew from his faith in God, Chapman finished high school and got into the University of South Carolina. He earned a bachelor’s degree, majoring in Biology, Public Health and Sociology.

 

After graduation, he worked for a year with Emergency Medical Services. It was a job in health care, a field he knew he belonged in. But it wasn’t the role he really wanted. Chapman had always thought about becoming a doctor, a dream that seemed like a reach, given everything he’d been through. “I had kind of given up on the medical school thing.”

Kind of given up – but not completely. Chapman applied to the College of Medicine at MUSC – and to his surprise, he got in. “I wasn't really thinking I was going to jump on an accelerated track. I was just happy to be in med school at all, on any track.”

That fast track he mentioned, the Accelerated Medical Pathway, lets students who qualify meet their graduation requirements in three years and puts them on the path to a residency at MUSC. That means they get started on their careers earlier, earning paychecks, and have one less year of tuition to pay for. 

But the Accelerated Medical Pathway at MUSC is competitive. It requires not only good grades and excellent organizational skills but also students who can qualify early for residency programs.

Chapman, despite all he’d overcome, did not think he’d become one of those students. “I was just focused on passing my classes. But when we got to the end of our first semester, second semester, I was doing really well. I was doing a lot better than I expected.”

That led to conversations with administrators and faculty members, including Singleton  and Loftley, about the accelerated pathway. The talks with Loftley were especially important because she helps lead MUSC’s Internal Medicine residency program, which Chapman was interested in.

 

Their conclusion: Chapman was a good fit for an accelerated path through medical school and the residency that would follow.

Now, Chapman is finishing medical school a year early – the only student in his class at the College of Medicine to do so. And he starts his residency at MUSC next month. He’ll do so with his new wife, Maryah Chapman. She’s a home health nurse he knew growing up in Columbia. And she has a couple of messages she wants his story to include.

“I would say that he is truly the most passionate person that I've ever known. And he really does care about people. I've come across a lot of clinicians and health care providers and I'm sure a lot of people could say that. But I truly have never met anyone who is as dedicated to the cause as he is,” she said.

Second, she said, his story shows that with the right support, circumstances and faith, anything may be possible. “Hard work and dedication all play into where you can be. And just because you start off in a hard situation doesn't mean that you can't have a bright future.”

Chapman’s future is certainly bright. And he credits his time at MUSC with helping make that possible. “I think MUSC did a good job. I'm glad that they have a holistic process as far as interviewing and accepting people because they made me feel like my experiences, the things I had gone through, they treated it like it was really added value,” he said.

“From the very beginning, they treated me like, ‘We know you're going to be a great doctor because you experienced all these things.’ And so I didn't have to leave all that stuff at the door. It came with me. And I feel like it helped me a lot in my experiences here.”