UTMB’s co-founder of TIME envisions expanding clinical training and mentorships throughout medical school and an approach that measures a student’s competency to hasten path to MD  

The battle lines to provide more extensive health care in the state of Texas have been drawn and officials at University of Texas colleges and medical schools believe the war for more doctors will be won by reducing the number of years students spend working on their medical degree.

One innovative pilot program at some of the health institutions in the UT System, TIME or Transformation In Medical Education, seeks to do just that.

TIME is a student-centered, clinically-focused program designed to increase the effectiveness of medical education while shortening the time it takes to get a medical degree. The program involves four partnerships among multiple UT institutions with the first medical students joining The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston in 2016. It currently takes eight years to complete undergraduate studies and medical school. TIME seeks to graduate students sooner and it could result in other medical schools adopting a similar system.

 Dr. Steve Lieberman, senior dean of administration at UTMB and co-chair of the TIME initiative, said that expanding clinical training throughout medical school and providing mentors will help students become physicians more quickly and completely than traditional medical school.

In Europe, doctors graduate after five to six years. The time required in the United States is part of an antiquated system that has been in place for 105 years.

“If we can show that we can train students more quickly in six or seven years, with as good or better outcomes, how could we not do it for everyone?,” Lieberman said. “Unless there’s some logistical reason why we couldn’t do it, then we ought to be doing it for everyone.”

In addition to possibly addressing the shortage of doctors, the TIME program will help reduce the debt that many physicians incur during their education.  The median amount is $170,000, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges. The TIME program could save participants a quarter of that debt.

“When students go to med school, whether it’s at UTMB or Houston, their experiences are going to be different,” said Hugo Rodriguez, assistant professor in the department of biomedicine and TIME coordinator at UT Rio Grande Valley, Brownsville campus. “But we have something in common – we want to create a great doctor. A doctor with an adequate attitude, with quality, with good compassion, the kind of doctor you want at your bedside when you are sick.”

For more information, please visit www.utsystem.edu/initiatives/time/homepage.

SIDEBAR

Texas ranks near the bottom in the U.S. in doctors per capita. In order to help combat these numbers, UT officials came up with TIME in 2009, which partners UT System undergraduate schools and medical schools to provide an accelerated path to a medical degree.

TIME consists of four regional partnerships between undergraduate and medical schools across the UT System:

A-PRIME (Accelerated Professional, Relevant, Integrated Medical Education)
Undergraduate: UT Brownsville and UT-Pan American (Soon to be combined into UT Rio Grande Valley), UT-El Paso

Medical: UTMB, UT Health Science Center-Houston

FAME (Facilitated Acceptance to Medical Education)

Undergraduate: UT San Antonio
Medical: UT Health Science Center San Antonio

PACT (Partnership in Advancing Clinical Transition)
Undergraduate: UT Dallas

Medical: UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas

*Undergraduate: UT Austin
Medical: Dell Medical School at UT Austin, UT Health Science Center-Houston
*This partnership is currently on hold as the Dell Medical School gets underway

Pull Chart

2025: The year that will see a shortage of 46,000 to 90,000 doctors

46 percent – The number of people over the age of 65 by 2015

16.4 million – The number of new American now insured since the Affordable Care Act passed
*Numbers provided by the Association of American Medical Colleges

Click here for a photo of the students and faculty from UT Rio Grande Valley, Brownsville's A-PRIME program.

Click here for a photo of A-PRIME students working on clinical skills with a medical simulation mannequin.