New Burnett School of Medicine Students Learn to Collaborate During ‘Introduction to Medicine’

FORT WORTH – As 60 new medical students began Introduction to Medicine at the Anne Burnett Marion School of Medicine at Texas Christian University, one word kept coming up in conversations: Collaboration.  

This was one of the main reasons Mebeli Becerra, MS-1, a U.S. Air Force Academy graduate, chose to attend the Burnett School of Medicine at TCU.  

“The collaborative nature of this school rather than a competitive environment is really going to benefit all of us,” Becerra said. “Getting rid of rankings and collaborating on case studies in class like Patient-Centered Inquiry Based Learning Based (PIBL) is really interesting and it makes sense.” 

Becerra and a few of her classmates talked about the benefits of collaboration following their first content framing session. The students heard a powerful story from burn survivor and retired Phoenix police officer Jason Schecturle.

As a rookie police officer in 2001, a car crashed into the rear of Schechterle’s patrol car causing it to burst into flames, trapping him inside. He suffered severe burns to over 40 percent of his body, which drastically altered his appearance. He has undergone more than 50 surgeries just to have the ability to accomplish simple daily tasks we often take for granted.

During content framing sessions students get to meet patients who share stories about their medical experiences.

“It really reinforces what we’re trying to learn,” Becerra said.

One of the seven intentional focuses of the Burnett School of Medicine is collaboration through team-based care, patient and family partnerships and shared decision making. That collaborative spirit feeds into the idea of creating Empathetic Scholars®, according to JoAnna Leuck, M.D., Associate Dean for Educational Affairs at Burnett School of Medicine.   

“We want the students to leave here with a growth mindset and that can only be achieved through collaboration with their peers, faculty, patients and the health care teams they will be a part of in the future,” Dr. Leuck said. 

During the first two weeks of medical school in July, the students begin a unique Introduction To Medicine course designed by Dr. Leuck and Erin Nelson, Psy.D., Assistant Dean of Physician Communication at Burnett School of Medicine.  

The course equips new medical students with the skills they need to be successful. 

“It gets the students familiar with all of the things about our school like the curriculum, the culture and the resources we have,” Dr. Leuck said. “Then, we have sessions to build the skills they need to be successful in the curriculum.” 

The two-week course explores the flipped classroom and active learning model, exam skills,Longitudinal integrated clerkship (LIC) model, physician communication and wellness, along with service learning. The course emphasizes the “why” behind this novel approach to medical education that foregoes lecture-based classrooms. 

“We explain how it’s going to help them, their patients and really familiarize them so they are ready to go to clinic when the LIC starts,” Dr. Leuck said.  

The students also learn how the school breaks down their time in medical school into three phases instead of the traditional academic year model. In Phase 1, students spend 15 months learning the integrated foundation in basic and clinical sciences. They are also enrolled in five longitudinal courses Clinical Skills, LIC 1 Foundational Experience, Future Accelerators of Medicine and Beyond (FAB), Scholarly Pursuit and Thesis (SPT) and Preparation for Practice (P4P). They are also paired with a preceptor and begin seeing patients from their first weeks in this LIC model.   

Lexi Freeman, MS-1, a Fort Worth native, is excited to be able to begin training in the LIC model in her hometown. 

“I’m always about giving back,” Freeman said. “Fort Worth is opening up its doors to me to learn to practice medicine here and it goes both ways we’re going to grow stronger together.” 

Active Learning/Flipped Classroom

Whitney Stanton, MS-1, waited five years after graduating from University of Colorado-Boulder before applying to medical school. She did research in urology and pediatric lymphoma during those years.  

As she celebrated entering medical school with her classmates, family and friends at the White Coat Celebration, there was something more than scientific research that drove her to pursue medical education at Burnett School of Medicine.  

A huge part was the flipped classroom and active learning model that the medical school offers physicians in training.  

“I really think I will thrive in the flipped classroom model because I’ll be coming into class having done pre-work and hopefully have questions answered during class,” Stanton said. “I also love how they are teaching with the Socratic method so we’re actively engaged in the content that we’re learning.” 

The Socratic method, which involves a shared dialogue between a teacher and students, is one of many studied methods that show adult learners succeed more in an active learning and flipped-classroom model. The medical school also uses role-playing in real-world medical case studies to engage the students even more, Dr. Leuck added. 

“It’s all about application,” Dr. Leuck said. “Instead of a lecture where someone is just talking at you and you only absorb a small percentage, if you read on your own and spend time with our faculty asking questions and applying those objectives it makes the information stickier.”  

Physician Communication

The Physician Communication team at the Burnett School of Medicine has created a communication curriculum that runs longitudinally through Introduction to Medicine until the students’ last course called Transition to Residency before they exit medical school.  

The curriculum focuses on communication in clinical skills, doctor-patient-family relationships, community, industry and beyond. During Introduction to Medicine, the students worked in groups and did role-playing exercises that had them work through communication barriers. 

“We really wanted to set the stage for students to see how communication barriers can occur and how misunderstandings can impact the interpersonal relationship between a physician and their patient,” said Dr. Nelson. 

For Becerra, being at a medical school that embeds communication throughout the curriculum is important. Her parents were born in Colombia and immigrated to the United States when she was five years old. Her family spoke Spanish as their first language and had to learn English.  

As an undergraduate at the U.S. Air Force Academy, she served as a Spanish language translator for physicians and residents at a local free clinic in Colorado. 

“Once, there was a female Hispanic patient who couldn’t speak English and they put me in the room to translate for her and she was really able to open up for her provider,” Beccera said. “I hope that I can do that again in the Fort Worth community and really make a comfortable space for the patients and the Hispanic community.” 

Having an intentional focus on communication training for future doctors promotes self-awareness and awareness for differences in others, Dr. Nelson said: “It continues to nurture those empathetic principles that drew our student body to our school and to help set the stage for every single patient encounter that they’ll have the rest of the way.” 

Making Resources Available  

Medical school is  time consuming, and students need resources available to them. The Introduction to Medicine course allowed students to meet with leaders of different student resources at TCU. 

“TCU has so many great resources and we really want to make sure students know what they have before they really need it,” Dr. Leuck said.  

Students learned about TCU student resources on TCU’s campus as well as TCU resources available only to School of Medicine students.  

Sean Kelso, MS-1, appreciated the school dedicating time to getting students connected with all the resources TCU offers. 

“It showed me that TCU really puts its money where its mouth is in terms of offering students all kinds of opportunities for success,” Kelso said. “It was great to be able to put a face to a name with all those departments and opportunities.” 

Introduction to Medicine isn’t just a meet-and-greet period, it’s a graded course that sets students up for success during their medical school career. All 60 students had to complete a list of objectives during the two-week period that included BLS/Fit training, credentialing with clinical community partners and a low-stakes exam at the conclusion. 

“While there is a lot of introductions and we try to make sure they get to know each other it is a graded course and certainly there are expectations and they are meeting those,” Dr. Leuck said.