Faculty delivers powerful Thinking Big message
By Lin Lofley
Visiting prospective medical students got some rapid-fire information on Feb. 20 from several faculty members making the same case – The first step toward a fulfilling career in medicine and research should begin at UT Southwestern Medical Center.
The Thinking Big event annually brings together faculty members and college seniors who have been accepted to attend UT Southwestern Medical School. The vast majority of those students also have been accepted by other schools, so the faculty members address the group to summarize why UT Southwestern is the place to be.
Thinking Big’s 2016 lineup consisted of:
- Dr. Sandra Schmid, Chair of Cell Biology;
- Dr. Malcolm MacConmara, Assistant Professor of Surgery;
- Dr. Julie Pfeiffer, Associate Professor of Microbiology;
- Dr. Melanie Sulistio, Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine;
- Dr. Deborah Diercks, Chair of Emergency Medicine; and
- Dr. Ashoke Sathy, Assistant Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery.
Dr. Diercks told the students that medical education universally is in a period of adaptation that has come with the realization that today’s medical students want to have a life outside medicine that includes family and other interests.
“We have to add the expectation of balance and outside interest into your life,” she said, noting that the field of medical education is reconfiguring the three-legged stool of students’ lives to more closely reflect those interests. “Academic careers don’t follow a smooth path all the time. In nearly 20 years, I’ve seen where funding was abundant, and I’ve seen where it isn’t there at all. It just isn’t consistent. There will be some bumps along the way.
“If you understand that your career is a long journey, then you will be a success.”
Dr. Diercks’ presentation made a strong impression on Maria Lima, a senior at Rice University who’s been accepted at a half-dozen medical schools. But “UT Southwestern is where I will be come next fall,” she said firmly.
“I liked UT Southwestern for the abundance of opportunities for community involvement,” said Ms. Lima, who will graduate from Rice with degrees in psychology and in biological sciences. “The wide assortment of community clinics and health-care opportunities open to the students here was a major consideration for me.”
All the speakers had important points to make in their allotted speaking time of approximately 10 minutes.
Dr. Schmid, a renowned researcher in the study of clathrin-mediated endocytosis, amused the college seniors with her invocation of “the Google – it’s a miracle” and admitted technological advances are why “a Golden Age of Biomedical Research” is occurring “that will allow us to better treat, diagnose, and cure disease.
“I moved here four years ago, and I did it because of you guys. We’re in an ocean of opportunity, and this is where you need to be,” Dr. Schmid said.
Dr. MacConmara, an eminent transplant surgeon, summed up UT Southwestern in his presentation: “Life. Giving. Innovation.” Illustrating his talk with photos from the operating room, he discussed liver transplantation and the issue of donor organ scarcity. He described how experiences with the transplant team enrich student education and also how students at UT Southwestern are improving the organ donation process.
“Our students began talking about having a Transplant Society here in the Medical School,” he said. “Establishing that group has led to an early exposure to the unique field of transplantation.”
Dr. MacConmara welcomed the novel thinking and talents of UT Southwestern students and described current efforts to foster their roles in developing innovative solutions for transplant patients.
“One of the great things about UT Southwestern is that you can walk down the corridors here and find the experts on anything you want to accomplish,” he said. “In transplantation, we’re trying to engage students to explore the unique problems that the transplant patient faces and then to walk down the corridor from the classrooms and help build new solutions.”
Dr. MacConmara outlined novel opportunities to enhance organ preservation and challenged the future students of UT Southwestern to be at the forefront of their development.
Dr. Pfeiffer, an expert in the study of the viruses, spoke of the interlocking circles of research at UT Southwestern, and how experts work together in laboratories all over campus.
“In my lab, we had a hypothesis about how gut bacteria may protect the host from infection with intestinal viruses such as poliovirus. But I knew nothing about the gut, and very little about bacteria, so I contacted Dr. Lora Hooper, Professor of Immunology and of Microbiology. That’s the beauty of UT Southwestern. You can find someone to fill in the gaps in your own knowledge. Dr. Hooper is one of my best friends and she and others here have enhanced my research dramatically.”
Dr. Sulistio, Associate Director of the Internal Medicine Residency Program, discussed the “Two Secrets of Great Physicians,” and how those secrets reveal themselves.
“Great physicians know that they’re ignorant,” she told the students. “The fact is that every piece of knowledge that you get stimulates 10 more questions. Say I have the cure for pancreatic cancer. That’s going to stimulate a host of brand-new questions, such as ‘How much will it cost?’ ‘How are we going to mass produce it?’
“But for the great physician, that ignorance stimulates two things: humility and curiosity. Humility leads us to tell the patient that ‘I may not be the best person to do the surgery on you.’ Humility says, ‘I don’t know how to fix this.’ But if you are humble, that triggers your curiosity. If you’re not the best person to do the procedure, then you are going to want to find out who is, and how you can learn from that person.”
Dr. Sathy spoke to the students about the field of orthopaedic surgery, and about the challenges and decisions that surgeons and their patients face every day. He spoke of the importance of technology and surgical tools in the current landscape of his specialty, and how advances make it possible to put limbs back together.
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Dr. Diercks holds the Audre and Bernard Rapoport Distinguished Chair in Clinical Care and Research.
Dr. Hooper, who is a faculty member of the Center for Genetics of Host Defense, holds the Jonathan W. Uhr, M.D. Distinguished Chair in Immunology, and is a Nancy A. Marcus Scholar in Medical Research, in Honor of Dr. Bill S. Vowell.
Dr. Schmid holds the Cecil H. Green Distinguished Chair in Cellular and Molecular Biology.
