Baylor University officials gathered Thursday at Baylor Law School to celebrate a $250,000 gift to its one-of-a-kind medical humanities program.

The gift, the second half of a $500,000 gift for scholarships in the program, was given by Michael DeBakey, famed cardiac surgeon and chancellor emeritus of Baylor College of Medicine, about six months before he died in July 2008 at age 99.

Medical humanities program director James Marcum, who also teaches in the philosophy department; assistant director Michael Attas, a Waco cardiologist; interim President David Garland; incoming President Ken Starr; and regent Chairman Dary Stone were among those at the gathering.

Waco cardiologist Michael Attas (left) and incoming Baylor University president Ken Starr share a laugh at Thursday’s announcement.

DeBakey Medical Foundation board member Gale Galloway, representing the foundation, was unable to attend because of a scheduling conflict.

The entirety of the gift will fund the Michael E. DeBakey, Selma DeBakey and Lois DeBakey Endowed Scholarship Fund in medical humanities.

Attas and Marcum said the medical humanities students are turning themselves into commodities prized by the nation’s top medical schools: future doctors able to connect on a personal, spiritual and emotional level with their patients. About one-third of Baylor’s 900 premed students are in the medical humanities program.

“Medical schools are enthralled with what we’re doing at Baylor,” Attas said of the 12-year-old program, which he said is offered only at Baylor and focuses on adding ethical and spiritual elements to medical education.

“Learning the science of medicine is pretty easy,” he added, “if you have the intellectual tools. But equipping yourself to do the other stuff is where you have to do the hard internal work. Intellectually, all of our students are plenty capable of getting into medical school and doing well in medicine, but some are not quite ready, emotionally, to deal with these issues, and our program helps them get there.”

Understanding patients

Marcum said it’s imperative for even the most talented physicians to “be able to connect with their patients — to really be able to listen to their story and to understand the value of that story, in terms of the overall care of the patient.”

“Medicine is both science and the human predicament, so we try to equip our students with the skills to try to reflect on that human dimension,” Marcum said.

Attas and Marcum are the primary faculty for the program, though Marcum said many of the courses are in other disciplines, taught by faculty in other departments.

However, the fact that the medical humanities program has no full-time faculty specifically dedicated to the program came up more than once Thursday.

When asked if he planned to provide medical humanities with full-time faculty, Starr, who takes the reins June 1, laughed and said, “(The program) is attracting the attention of some of the finest medical schools in the nation. . . . Well, I have a feeling that we’ll have a very good conversation about it.”

Full-time faculty or not, Attas said he will remain committed to the program.

“I believe it’s important, otherwise I wouldn’t have staked the latter half of my professional life to it,” Attas said. “Baylor’s positioned to uniquely do something. The thing that I’m realizing is there’s such a ripple effect.

“If we crank out 100 graduates a year in this program, they’re going to take care of 30, 40, 50,000 patients in their lifetimes. The ripple effect, potentially, is huge in the way health care is delivered. I think it’s going to change the marketplace completely.”

By Tim Woods Tribune-Herald staff writer
Friday May 14, 2010