What makes Dell Medical School unique? [Show summary]

Joel Daboub, Director of Admissions and Records for Dell Medical School at UT Austin, explores the school’s unique curriculum and what applicants need to know about Dell Medical’s approach to admissions.

Find out about Dell's one-of-a-kind approach to medical education, and what adcom members are seeking in applicants. [Show notes]

Today's guest is Joel Daboub, Director of Admissions and Records for Dell Medical School at UT Austin. He earned his MBA at the University of North Texas and worked at UNT's Health Science Center as Assistant Dean of Admissions from 2004 to 2015. He then joined the brand-new medical school at UT Austin, the Dell Medical School, which we're going to learn about right now.

Can you give an overview of the Dell Medical MD program? [1:30]

I’ll point to our curriculum and describe that first because that's one of the most unique aspects of Dell Medical School. As a brand-new medical school, one of the things that we had an opportunity to do was to rethink medical education. What are the challenges that physicians face today that may not necessarily be addressed with a traditional medical education? And in particular, how do we reinvent healthcare? What skills do clinicians need today to not only take care of their patients, but also manage the healthcare system? And I say “we” euphemistically. The greater minds in medical education looked at curriculums from across the country and across other countries as well to see what skills physicians need to develop. How could we design a curriculum to meet that?

The first thing that many students recognize is that our basic science curriculum is only 12 months long. Historically, in a Flexner-like model, that would be at a two-year length of basic science education. That allows us to then use the second year for clinical education. Historically, that would be your third year. Having our students go through that training in that sequence, that opens up the third year to a lot of marvelous opportunities, especially since we're part of the University of Texas, and there are so many great training programs at the university that can be beneficial for future leaders. Making that third year available for a dual degree or research activity really gives our students an opportunity to expand their skills in that third year that you historically would not necessarily get in medical training.

Particularly if you’re going on to manage or work in management in a hospital setting, you may choose to do the MBA program, for instance. We have a brand-new health policy degree opening up with the LBJ School for that year. We have a health transformation degree that's just brand-new in our school for that year that's actually created by Elizabeth Teisberg, who was one of the co-authors of the book about healthcare transformation that's really changed how we think about managing healthcare. That third year really expands the opportunity for our students to gain additional skills that one would not necessarily get in medical training but we believe are necessary if you're going to be at the table, making decisions about how healthcare is going to change. We are starting to think also about not just the process of using fee-payer models to run healthcare, but about how healthcare outcomes are more important drivers than ...