This School of Medicine couple will continue their training together with residencies at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center
Shannon Steines, M26, and Aidan Welsh, A22, M26, started dating in the second year of medical school and have been together ever since. Photo: Alonso Nichols
For most fourth-year medical students, Match Day each March is a day of high and public drama: with professors, classmates, family, and friends watching, students open envelopes to find out where they will be completing their residency training.
For Shannon Steines, M26, and Aidan Welsh, A22, M26, it was a little different. They found out via email on December 10, 2025. “We were at Aidan’s apartment making pancakes with his roommate,” Steines said. “It was very special and low-key.”
“My email came at 12:05 p.m. and hers at 12:15 p.m.,” Welsh said.
The difference was due to the fact that Steines and Welsh are both doing residencies with the military, which has a separate matching process and a decidedly less flashy notification system. Despite the lack of balloons, sartorial finery, and flashbulbs, the couple could not have been more excited: they both matched to residency programs at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.
It's quite a feat because Steines and Welsh are in different branches of the military and Walter Reed is the only site that offers residencies for both. On top of that, they both chose highly competitive surgical specialties.
Shannon Steines, a lieutenant in the Navy, will complete a residency in gynecological surgery and obstetrics, and Aidan Welsh, a captain in the Army, will do his in orthopedic surgery. Photo: Courtesy of Shannon Steines
Steines, a lieutenant in the Navy, will complete a residency in gynecological surgery and obstetrics, and hopes to complete a fellowship in gynecologic oncology after that. Welsh, a captain in the Army, will do his in orthopedic surgery.
Not only will they be together, they are looking forward to being near Welsh’s family and friends who live outside Annapolis. Welsh said growing up near the United States Naval Academy influenced his decision to join the armed forces. “I always had a passion to serve,” he said. As an undergraduate at Tufts, he was a member of the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC), which trains students to become commissioned officers in the military.
Steines became interested in the Navy because her grandfather was an Army medic in World War II. She did Navy Junior ROTC in high school in Chicago before attending the University of Notre Dame where she majored in biological sciences and Spanish.
Steines and Welsh both attended Tufts University School of Medicine with funds awarded by the Health Professions Scholarship Program in exchange for serving in military medical centers after medical school and residency—and both look forward to doing so.
“It’s a special opportunity where you can work in a health system that provides universal healthcare to its beneficiaries, and you have the opportunity to practice medicine abroad on military bases,” Steines said.
The couple started dating in the second year of medical school and have been together ever since. Being in medical school didn’t leave much time for their relationship, but they say the experience offered special gifts. “Overall, it’s been a benefit,” Welsh said. “We were both experiencing a unique set of stressors, and it would be challenging to explain those emotions and stressors to someone not in medicine.”
Steines said they supported each other through the hard days with an insider’s empathy. And on the days that weren’t as hard, they each brought a light-heartedness that balanced out the seriousness of medicine. Navigating the matching process was their biggest challenge. “Trying to get to the same place and making sure we were both making the best decisions for our careers was the hardest thing we’ve been through,” she said.
They could have pursued civilian residencies, but both were drawn to training in the military. Steines said a rotation at the naval base in San Diego cemented her desire. “I really liked the culture of sacrifice in the military community, especially how it shapes the way people practice healthcare and take the time to care for patients thoroughly,” she said.
Aside from sharing a desire to serve, Steines and Welsh also share a love of activity and adventure. Welsh played soccer at Tufts and was part of the 2018 and 2019 national championship teams, and Steines was a member of the boxing club at Notre Dame. “We’re both super outdoorsy and we love adventure and traveling,” Steines said. “That informs both of us wanting to be in the military.”
Between medical school and residency, Shannon Steines and Aidan Welsh spent a month traveling in southeast Asia. They returned to Boston for Commencement Day. Photo: Courtesy of Shannon Steines
Between medical school and residency, Steines and Welsh spent a month traveling in southeast Asia. The first two weeks they traveled in Vietnam with Welsh’s roommate, who planned everything for the trio ahead of time. Then Steines and Welsh went to Thailand, just the two of them, with no itinerary at all. “We’re loose planners,” Welsh said. “Type A in medical school and Type B in life.”
“We love to see what happens when we get there,” Steines said.
International travel is good preparation for becoming an orthopedic surgeon in the Army, Welsh said, because he’s likely to be deployed after residency to care for service members hurt in battle or during training.
“I want to be culturally sensitive and comfortable providing care around the world,” he said, adding that the training began at the School of Medicine. “We have the great blessing of training in Chinatown, where you get to take care of people from all over the globe. The depth of training in cultural humility was so great at Tufts and so beneficial to our future careers.”
