Creating the Empathetic Scholar® Education Model

FORT WORTH – Teaching medical students to put the patient at the center of care and create a partnership between physicians, patients, and their families is a unique approach to medical education.

Stuart D. Flynn, M.D., the Founding Dean of the Anne Burnett Marion School of Medicine at Texas Christian University, and Jacque Chadwick, M.D., Special Assistant to the Dean, are trailblazers on this type of medical training. They are using that patient-centered model to create Empathetic Scholars®and physicians of the future.

“The delivery of health care is broken,” Dr. Chadwick said. “It’s not doing the best it can do for the patient, and so we need to have these doctors prepared to function within the system that exists.”

In a traditional four-year medical school curriculum, the preclinical phase is two years of science training where students sit in lectures learning about basic medical concepts, structures, functions of the body, diseases, diagnoses, and treatment concepts, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). The last two years are when students begin clinical rotations and get hands-on experience with patients in the major medical specialties.

The Burnett School of Medicine at TCU has flipped that model and pairs students with physicians and their patients in the major medical specialties all four years of their curriculum.

“I think every medical school obviously thinks about caring for patients, but then you have to see it ingrained in the culture of your environment – that’s how we put this school together,” said Dean Flynn.

Dean Flynn and Dr. Chadwick, discussed the creation of the medical school’s unique Empathetic Scholar®curriculum with faculty, staff and students during a panel discussion at the medical school moderated by Judy Bernas, Senior Associate Dean and Chief Communication and Strategy Officer.

“The faculty physicians here are paying back what they got when they were medical students and that is training the next generation of doctors with empathy and compassion,” Dean Flynn said.

The conversation followed the Burnett School of Medicine at TCU’s Dedication Event for its new medical education building, named Arnold Hall, in Fort Worth’s Medical Innovation District.

The impetus in creating an Empathetic Scholars® model began in the late 2000s when both Dr. Flynn and Dr. Chadwick worked for the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Phoenix.

Dr. Flynn served as the College of Medicine’s Founding Dean and Dr. Chadwick served as Vice Dean. They implemented a few concepts, however, they had to contend with the established curriculum, which had been in place since the early 1990s.

“We were given a curriculum, especially the clinical curriculum, from an established school that was very traditional. We were not able to change that at all,” Dr. Chadwick said. “We were able to create first- and second-year curriculum that was brand new and very different that we were proud of, and I think that gave us a bit of an appetite to do something full scope that we could create new.”

Dean Flynn’s expertise was in medical school curriculum and Dr. Chadwick excelled at clinical education. To do something radically different in medical education, they would need an opportunity to create a new medical school from the ground up so they could shape the culture and DNA of the school.

“If you start a new medical school, I think you’re obligated to take advantage of it,” Dean Flynn said. “At least where you can predict where medicine might be 5 or 10 years from now. It’s kind of hard to predict much past that.”

Dean Flynn, Dr. Chadwick, and a small team arrived in Fort Worth in 2015. They began laying the groundwork of what would become the Burnett School of Medicine and its Empathetic Scholar® curriculum. In those days, they would sit with about 30 to 40 physicians and basic scientists in a large room posing questions to one another.

What kind of medical student would you be proud of as a graduate of this medical school? What kind of physician would you want after residency? What kind of physician would you want for you and your family?

“Initially, the conversation with some of the groups was that we need the traditional, sit-in-a-lecture-hall curriculum,” Dr. Chadwick said. “It was very hard to convince some physicians that it might be better to do things different.”

Once the idea of creating a new paradigm of medical education came to fruition, the process became fun, Dean Flynn said. They set out to create a curriculum that’s forward-thinking and trains medical students for where medicine is going.

“Knowledge and technology is escalating big time,” said Chadwick recalling the early discussions on the new curriculum. “We focused on lifelong learning and critical thinking. How do you get the students to not memorize, but to interact with the material, the technology early on?”

The curriculum was also built to be adaptable and flexible as the medical school evolves, Dean Flynn said.

Currently, the Empathetic Scholar® curriculum consists of Future Accelerators of Medicine and Beyond (F.A.B.) course, Longitudinal Integrated Clerkship (LIC), Physician Communication, Coaching Initiatives, Scholarly Pursuit & Thesis (SPT), Preparation For Practice (P4P), Simulation & Technology, Wellbeing, and Clinical Skills.

Another important part of the curriculum is to prepare future physicians for today’s health care industry.

When Dr. Flynn and Dr. Chadwick were in medical school, they never learned about the health care system. Medical students today “need to know about those things and hopefully be leaders to change it back to being a patient-centered way of delivering care.” Dr. Chadwick said.

The Burnett School of Medicine was awarded full accreditation by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) in June 2023. That came after a seven-year review process by the LCME that affirms the highest standards in the training of future M.D. physicians.

The inaugural class of medical students, known as the Dorman Scholars, began in July 2019. Since then, the medical school has matriculated a full student body of 240 students, which is 60 students in each class, and graduated two classes. Graduates of the medical school have landed residency spots in top programs such as, The Mayo Clinic, Stanford Health Care, UCLA Health, Vanderbilt, University of Michigan, New York University, and University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

“I’m turning around to hand the baton to the next generation, and I want them to not only be able to take care of me and my family and all of their patients in the best way possible,” Dr. Chadwick said. “I want them to be the next group of leaders who want to also do their very best. I want them to be changeable and teachable.”