In December 2022, Fort Worth’s Amon G. Carter Foundation “challenged” the Burnett School of Medicine to secure $30 million in new gifts and pledges by May 31, 2023, offering a $15 million additional grant if the challenge was achieved.
With the help of Fort Worth and TCU communities, the challenge was met, resulting in more than $45 million in philanthropic support for the Burnett School of Medicine at TCU.
The gifts will help expand the pool of student scholarships, bolster programs addressing student well-being, fund student research programs, and enhance the clinical training of the school’s medical students. The Carter Challenge grant will also add support to core student programs and technology needs, underpinning the innovations that fuel the Burnett School’s growing national reputation.
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.
Dean Flynn is also joined by Michael Sanborn, Chief Growth Officer & EVP of Baylor, Scott & White, to hang window framing on the third floor of the building. Dean Flynn and Sanborn also talk about the ongoing Graduate Medical Education (GME) collaboration between Baylor, Scott & White All Saints Medical Center – Fort Worth and the Burnett School of Medicine at TCU.
When the new 100,000-square-foot medical education building opens in the Summer of 2024, it will the home for 240 medical students, hundreds of staff and faculty.
“We’re welcoming our fifth class of future physicians,” said Stuart D. Flynn, M.D., the Founding Dean of the Burnett School of Medicine at TCU. “This new class of Empathetic Scholars® embraces our school’s unique perspective on empathy and communication combined with deep medical knowledge, which will ultimately lead to better patient care and better health outcomes.”
The students received their white coats at TCU’s Legends Club at Amon G. Carter Stadium. Each year, white coat ceremonies are held by medical schools all across the U.S. and medical students receive their short white coats. It signifies the beginning of their journey to achieve the long white coat, when they are physicians, according to the American Medical Association.
“Congratulations! This is an incredible day for the families,” said TCU Chancellor Victor Boschini Jr. at the event. “To all of the medical students, work really hard to be colleagues not competitors because you are all brilliant. ”
The Burnett School of Medicine adds their own twist to the celebration by having family members gather around each medical student to help them put on their white coat.
First-year medical student Mebeli Becerra represented the class at the event. “The white coat is a symbol of healing for heatlh care professionals,” she said. “As for my fellow medical students and I, it demonstrates our commitment to becoming Empathetic Scholars®.”
More than 6,300 applied to be one of 60 students selected for the class of 2027. The first-year medical students represent 15 states and seven countries. Fifteen students come from Texas and 12 students graduated from TCU. Forty percent of the class self-identifies with one or more of the three school defined diversity domains: race/ethnicity, LGBTQ, or socio-economic limitation.
The medical school’s goal is to transform medical education by having a unique curriculum that incorporates communications training throughout the curriculum. Students are partnered with patients and physicians from their first day in a Longitudinal Integrated Clerkship model. Students also benefit from world-class simulation and technology, using the Microsoft HoloLens® and HoloAnatomy® mixed reality learning experience.
“We put our students at the forefront of medical innovation and make them comfortable with how patient care will be delivered in the future,” Dean Flynn said. “Our medical students will have a unique skillset that can adapt to new medical advances while treating patients and their families with compassion, empathy and respect.”
An anonymous donor family has provided a one-time merit-based gift to current students of the Anne Burnett Marion School of Medicine at Texas Christian University.
This incredibly generous gift award is based on academic excellence and covers a portion of this year’s tuition for students who are eligible, said Natalie Lundsteen, Ph.D., Assistant Dean for Student Affairs at the Burnett School of Medicine at TCU, who announced the tuition gift to students in the class of 2024, class of 2025 and class of 2026.
Academically eligible students will each receive up to $20,000 toward their fiscal year 2024 tuition, Lundsteen told the medical students. The donor family recognizes the financial burden placed on medical students and wants to ease that debt burden, she said.
Second-year medical student Lauren Hui was elated to hear the news: “It’s something that I never even expected. I think it’s such a phenomenal gift.”
The Office of Strategy and Communication at the Anne Burnett Marion School of Medicine at Texas Christian University runs the program, which trains medical students to represent the medical school in media interviews and marketing and social media campaigns. The students also attend special events and give reports and speeches to the local community.
“Our goal was to showcase our medical school through the compelling stories of our students,” said Maricar Estrella, Director of Digital Development and Content Strategy at the Burnett School of Medicine at TCU, who spearheaded the program. “As a new medical school with an innovative spin on medical education, we had to find an equally novel approach to how we promoted our unique programs.”
CASE received more than 4,500 entries from 636 institutions in nearly 30 countries. Of those, volunteer judges selected 626 exemplary entries for bronze, silver, gold, or Grand Gold recognition.
The Burnett Brand Ambassadors Program received a bronze award for the student engagement category.
The judges said, “the Burnett Brand Ambassadors Program is allowing medical students to develop marketing and communications skills that are useful in their medical practice while also furthering the reach of the School of Medicine, providing a win-win situation for student ambassadors and the program.”
Winners were selected based on several factors, including overall quality, innovation, use of resources and the impact on the institution or its external and internal communities, such as alumni, parents, students, and faculty and staff.
The awards, the premier recognition program for educational advancement, are peer-selected and adjudicated, honoring institutions worldwide whose talented staff have advanced their organizations through their resourcefulness and ingenuity.
CHICAGO – In its fourth of a nationwide muraland event series to celebrate TCU’s Sesquicentennial, TCU spotlighted not one but four of its alumni. The university traveled to the Midwest to focus on Chicago-area graduates and spotlight Horned Frogs leading in the critical area of health care.
Area alumni and TCU leaders celebrated Dr. McKenna Chalman ’19, M.D. ’23; Emma Joy ’21; Dr. Courtney Sullivan ’17; and Dr. Brandon Zsigray ’14 at an event June 22 following the launch of a large-scale, hand-painted mural featuring the four graduates. Chalman is a graduate of the inaugural class of the Anne Burnett Marion School of Medicine at TCU and is beginning her residency in general surgery at Rush University in Chicago.
The Chicago mural installation is 18 feet high and 56 feet wide and is located at 1920 N Western Ave. in the Bucktown neighborhood. It includes the phrase, “Where you find empathy, you find healing.” It is scheduled to be on display through at least July 2.
FORT WORTH – A study involving patients experiencing Long COVID-19 symptoms that have coronary artery disease (CAD), and those without it, has shown improvement in a variety of long COVID-19 symptoms using enhanced external counterpulsation (EECP) therapy.
Dr. Sathyamoorthy helped formulate the hypothesis for the study with Sachin A. Shah, PharmD, the senior author on the study and chief scientific officer at Flow Therapy, a nationwide EECP provider headquartered in Fort Worth.
Dr. Sathyamoorthy’s hypothesis aimed to demonstrate the effectiveness of EECP to treat Long COVID patients in either subgroup with or without CAD.
“But we did it with the greater aim to generate preliminary data in the non-CAD group,” Dr. Sathyamoorthy said. “Having confirmed positive findings in this group we are designing a larger randomized trial to confirm this finding. If so it would strengthen EECP therapy as a potential standard of care treatment for Long COVID in any patient not just those with CAD.”
That is why it is important we keep searching for solutions to fight COVID before and after infection occurs, Dr. Sathyamoorthy added.
“I am on record stating that the acute infection and illness phase is the tip of a chronic disease state iceberg that COVID-19 will unfortunately leave us with in global society,” Dr. Sathyamoorthy said. “Long COVID is one long term concern for us in the clinical community.”
EECP therapy is a non-invasive technique shown to improve cardiac and cerebral perfusion. Perfusion is the passage of fluid, or blood, through blood vessels to an organ or a tissue. EECP therapy has demonstrated in numerous peer-reviewed and published studies to have a machine-like basis of impact through the enhancement of the Endothelial NOS (eNOS) and nitric oxide pathway, which is a part of cardiovascular health maintenance in the human body.
The patients in the study presented with a variety of Long COVID-19 symptoms, including fatigue, breathing difficulties and chest discomfort. After undergoing 15-35 hours of EECP therapy, that included the patients undergoing a treatment session for one hour up to 35 times over the course of seven weeks, the patients showed improvement in several areas.
The research group’s analysis found statistically significant improvements across all validated testing tools:
Health Status using the SAQ7 tool improved by 25 points (Range 0-100)
Functional capacity using the DASI assessment improved by 20 points (range 0-58.2)
Fatigue levels using the PROMIS score decreased by 6 points (Range 4-20)
Shortness of Breath using the RDS decreased in 50% of patients
Walking capacity (6MWT) in 6 minutes increased by 178 feet
Researchers found the change from baseline for patients with long COVID only was significant for all endpoints and no difference was evident between patients with long COVID without CAD compared to those with CAD.
“We both believed that a very important part of Long COVID pathophysiology is driven by SARS-CoV2 induced endothelial inflammation and subsequent dysregulation of vasoreactive function through alterations in eNOS driven nitric oxide availability in patients,” Dr. Sathyamoorthy said. “Thus we had a hunch that this approach of EECP to treat Long COVID may work and all of our initial studies and publications in this area seem to support it.”
The research group presented their findings at the American College of Cardiology’s Cardiovascular Summit virtual conference back in February. Dr. Sathyamoorthy will help design and secure funding for the group to begin a larger randomized trial with a sham-control group to better test the findings in their initial study.
“Randomization studies have been done with EECP and have an accepted methodology in the literature which we will use to ensure validity of results,” Dr. Sathyamoorthy said.
The LCME accredits medical education programs leading to the M.D. degree in the United States and Canada. The announcement today from the LCME grants full accreditation for the full five years possible to the Burnett School of Medicine at TCU.
In a year of firsts for this new school, this significant milestone caps a seven-year review process that affirms the highest standards in the training of future M.D. physicians. It also establishes the medical school as a vital partner in elevating the national profile of Fort Worth as a hub for innovation in medicine, health care and education.
“This achievement represents the culmination of a vision that started in 2015 with a bold idea and a tremendous amount of passion. Today, in our 150th year, we are thrilled to celebrate full accreditation of the Anne Burnett Marion School of Medicine,” said TCU Chancellor Victor J. Boschini, Jr. “We are grateful for the support of the TCU Board of Trustees and commend the efforts of the staff and faculty, as well as the courage and fortitude of the students who took a chance on a new school. Now these new physicians will go out and exemplify what it means to be an Empathetic Scholar ®.”
A group of accreditors from the LCME completed a site visit to the Burnett School of Medicine in February and met with senior leadership, faculty and students before making their decision to grant the medical school full accreditation.
“This has been a tremendous opportunity to establish a unique and innovative medical school in the most remarkable community in the country,” said Stuart D. Flynn, M.D., founding dean of the Burnett School of Medicine. “The amazing individuals at TCU and the School of Medicine embraced a mission to transform medical education to advance patient care. Our goal has always been to inspire our students to be the kind of physicians that you would want caring for you. And our students have worked very hard to get here and they will be the leaders of health care moving forward.”
The Burnett School of Medicine was awarded preliminary accreditation from the LCME in October 2018, which enabled the School of Medicine to begin recruiting its inaugural class. The School of Medicine submitted its provisional accreditation materials in November 2020, leading to provisional accreditation from the LCME in June 2021. The school submitted materials for full accreditation in November 2022 and a survey visit occurred in February 2023.
Attaining full accreditation is a significant milestone in TCU’s $1 billion Lead On campaign and Lead On Strategic Plan and helps to bring recognition to the entire university.
“This solidifies TCU and its medical school graduates as agents of change and as innovators to help answer some of the most pressing issues in health care in Fort Worth and the global community,” TCU President Daniel Pullin said. “After years of intense and focused dedication, the Burnett School of Medicine is now recognized as a leader in transforming medical education. We continue to be committed to excellence, integrity and collaboration that will lead TCU and Fort Worth into the future.”
The LCME is sponsored by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) and the American Medical Association (AMA) and accredits medical education programs leading to the MD degree in the United States and Canada. LCME accreditation is a voluntary, peer-reviewed process of quality assurance that determines whether the medical education program meets established standards. The comprehensive review covers all aspects of the medical school, including the curriculum, finances, infrastructure and faculty. The full accreditation by the LCME confirms the high quality of the program.
The innovative curriculum at the School of Medicine focuses both on developing Empathetic Scholars®, while embracing and leading major drivers in the future of medicine, including artificial intelligence, technology monitoring patient health and disease and genomics. Each student also does a four-year research thesis, nurturing lifelong inquiry and learning. By 2030, the annual economic impact of the medical school is estimated at $4 billion, and the school is expected to generate about 31,000 jobs for North Texas, according to a Tripp Umbach study.
TCU began construction of a new 100,000-square-foot medical education building in Fort Worth’s Medical District in August 2022 and plans to open its doors in Summer 2024.The medical education building will support 240 medical students, hundreds of staff and faculty and an innovational simulation and technology space. It will also be the first educational building located outside of TCU’s main campus.
About the Burnett School of Medicine at TCU
The Anne Burnett Marion School of Medicine at Texas Christian University, Fort Worth’s M.D. school, opened in July 2019. The allopathic medical school was formed in 2015. The Burnett School of Medicine’s focus on communication, a first-of-its-kind curriculum and the development of Empathetic Scholars® uniquely positions the school to radically transform medical education, improving care for generations.
FORT WORTH – In the near future, students at the Anne Burnett Marion School of Medicine at Texas Christian University will be able to study, check out books or download them from the cloud inside the 3,000-square-foot library space in the new medical education building.
Episode four of “On Site: Construction of the Anne Burnett Marion School of Medicine at Texas Christian University with Founding Dean, Stuart D. Flynn, M.D.,” details the design of the library that will occupy a portion of the second floor in the new four-story medical education building.
Brooke Ruesch, Director of Project Development at TCU, shares why the university went with a more modern library design that enhances the educational experience for medical students and incorporates more of natural lighting to create an inviting ambience in the space. The building will support 240 medical students and hundreds of faculty and staff by summer 2024.
