June 2025 – Tarrant County Physician Online

The Magic in Medicine

by Justin Choy, MS-III

A five-year-old boy sat nervously on the exam table at Cook Children’s Neighborhood Health Center on McCart Avenue, his small hands gripping the crinkled paper as his wide eyes darted anxiously around the room. His mother murmured reassurances, but the unfamiliar setting left him frozen with apprehension. Noticing his unease, I reached into my pocket and pretended to pluck something from the air—only to reveal a bright, red sponge ball between my fingers. His eyes flickered with curiosity.

“Wait, where did that come from?” he whispered, his guarded expression beginning to soften.

As I continued, I gently tapped his ear and produced another sponge ball from its depths. His nervousness gave way to delight. A hesitant giggle escaped as he reached out to touch the impossible object. Weaving magic into the physical exam, I guided his gaze with each sleight of hand, subtly assessing his eye tracking and coordination. By the time I placed my stethoscope on his chest, his fear had vanished, replaced by eager anticipation for what trick might come next. In that moment, I saw how magic could do more than entertain—it could transform the clinical experience, turning fear into fascination and apprehension into engagement.

Bringing magic into pediatric care was never something I consciously planned. It began organically—during a clinical rotation, I encountered a young patient anxious about an upcoming procedure. Hoping to provide a distraction, I performed a simple card trick. To my surprise, her face lit up with delight, her fear momentarily replaced by curiosity and laughter. That single moment sparked a realization: magic could be more than just a hobby. It could be a tool for healing, a way to build trust, and a means of humanizing the hospital experience.

As my training progressed, I began incorporating magic into patient interactions regularly. I witnessed how it eased not only the children’s anxiety but also their parents’ worries. A simple trick could transform a tense clinical encounter into one of warmth and engagement, shifting the dynamic from apprehension to familiarity. This newfound approach allowed me to connect with families instantly, making medical visits less intimidating and more inviting.

Recognizing the profound impact of these moments, I sought out ways to bring magic to children in more meaningful ways. I started volunteering at the Dialysis Unit at Cook Children’s Hospital, performing tricks for kids as they received treatment. These sessions became transformative—not just for the children, but for me as well. I watched withdrawn patients brighten with curiosity, asking to see another trick, then another. Parents, often weary from the emotional toll of chronic illness, smiled as they watched their children experience moments of joy amidst their challenges.

Medicine is as much about connection as it is about science. Patients do not care how much we know until they know how much we care. A patient may not recall the specifics of a physical exam, the precise words a physician used, or even the exact diagnosis. But they will remember how they felt—whether they were comforted or dismissed, reassured or anxious. This is why, while medical knowledge and technical skill are essential, the ability to connect with patients on a human level is just as critical. A patient who feels at ease and trusts their provider is more likely to engage in their own care, leading to better outcomes. Just as a magician carefully crafts an experience that leaves a lasting impression, physicians must be intentional about creating clinical encounters that prioritize empathy, understanding, and connection. Whether it’s taking an extra moment to offer reassurance, explaining a procedure in a way that alleviates fear, or simply engaging with a patient on a personal level, these efforts make all the difference.

Magic serves as an unexpected yet powerful bridge in this dynamic. When a child sees a physician not merely as an authority figure but as someone who brings joy and wonder, the clinical setting becomes less intimidating. This principle extends beyond pediatrics into all areas of medicine.

As I continue my journey in medicine, I will carry these lessons forward, striving to cultivate human connection in every patient interaction. I encourage my fellow medical students and physicians to bring their passions into patient care—to find ways to forge deeper connections with patients. Whether through music, art, storytelling, or something as unexpected as magic, these personal touches can transform a hospital experience, offering comfort in moments of uncertainty. Medicine, after all, is about more than just curing illness—it is about nurturing hope, fostering connection, and proving that even in difficult times, moments of magic can still exist.

Reflections at the Conclusion of a Longitudinal Preceptorship

By Yun Tran, MD, MPH; Assistant Professor, Burnett School of Medicine at TCU; Staff Physician, Department of Family Medicine at JPS Health Network

On the last day of practice with the medical student whom I had been precepting for over two years, I couldn’t help but become emotional as I reflected on how the relatively new model of medical education called Longitudinal Integrated Clerkship (LIC) has reignited my passion for medicine.

Three years ago, I resigned from a primary care physician position in a large healthcare system. I was burned out and ready to give up medicine altogether. I enrolled in a Masters of Public Health program, thinking that I would transition away from direct patient care.

Then a phone call came just as I was in the midst of grappling with biostatistics and epidemiology. The chair of the family medicine department at TCU’s Burnett School of Medicine was looking for a course director for the first-year medical student clerkship. My name came across his desk because I had expressed interest in precepting a medical student when I was still working at the aforementioned healthcare system, which had an affiliation agreement with the new medical school. He saw that I was trained at the JPS Family Medicine residency and talked to the program director, who recommended me for the course director position.

Although I had years of experience teaching residents and medical students in the past, I had only a vague understanding of what the duty of a course director at this new medical school entailed. The medical school was two years old at the time and only provisionally accredited. However, with this position, I could see patients on a part-time basis at a county clinic. This would do beautifully while I worked on my MPH degree.

So I jumped in.

The learning curve that followed was steep and difficult, but it was also one of the most rewarding journeys I have taken in my life.

First, I had not considered fully the responsibility of crafting the course curriculum, which involved much more than simply sending students to clinics to learn from their preceptors. I was tasked to develop learning objectives, curate educational materials, and create written assignments to assess students’ learning. Fortunately, the course director before me had a curriculum that I could use as a blueprint to redesign and improve.

Second, the medical school has built based on an LIC, a concept that was foreign to me. In an LIC, throughout the first year, the students are paired with a primary care physician in the community. They go to clinic approximately every other week for a year to learn how to take a history, conduct a physical exam, and practice clinical reasoning, oral presentation, and documentation. The students concurrently take all of their other courses, including clinical skills with standardized patients. My job is to help prepare the students so that they can successfully transition into the second year, where they will have both inpatient and outpatient rotations in their eight core specialty clerkships that are longitudinal.1

Those were formidable challenges on their own, but the most intimidating prospect of my new position, in fact, was having to precept a medical student.

Recall that I was a burned-out and possibly somewhat cynical physician at the time. My fear was that I was going to discourage my student just as she started her first year of medical school. As much as I was unsatisfied with my career in medicine, I understood the need for developing the physician workforce and I still cared about people. I did not want my student to decide medicine was not for her after having me as her preceptor.

So with apprehension, I started this new phase of my career with my brand-new medical student, whose enthusiasm on her first day in the clinic motivated me to be on my best behavior. I took extra care to be a better listener when my patients talked, remembered to ask open-ended questions and wait for them to finish speaking without interruption, and summarized their problems and the plan of action while making sure that I had answered all their concerns. When my student asked me a question I was not too sure about, I acknowledged my ignorance and encouraged her to find the answer and teach me. One of her activities that day was to shadow a patient from their check-in to check-out to gain the patient’s perspective, and during her debriefing, she described how I had helped put the anxious patient at ease during the visit, and she hoped to learn to do the same.

Little did she know that her comment had put me at ease. I had not corrupted her view of medicine on her first day in the clinic. More importantly, I was not faking compassion with the patients. I truly relished being there for my patients and advising them to the best of my ability. I enjoyed the practice of medicine again!

Over the following year, my student grew to be someone who could conduct a full history and physical exam. She could also present her assessment and propose management plans. And by pending orders and having a useful chart note for me, she made me a more efficient clinician. I was also able to evaluate our course curriculum from the perspective of a preceptor. Being an MPH student at the same time also gave me a unique perspective about the needs of students, particularly adult learners. Both roles helped me tremendously as I worked to enhance the curriculum. The clinic itself also went through a transformation. At first, the nurses and medical assistants were inexperienced in navigating the intricacies of having a medical student who would be there long term, but they adapted and grew to value the partnership with the medical student as well.

When my student returned in her second year to complete her family medicine clerkship, she quickly grew to function at a sub-intern level. The patients appreciated having a medical student that they knew and frequently gave her compliments, which boosted her confidence in her ability to become an empathetic physician. I also benefited. As I witnessed my student’s development, her curiosity and eagerness to acquire knowledge, and her caring attitude, I was able to learn much more from her than information on the most up-to-date medicine that she obtained from concurrent clerkships. I also gained a sense of immense fulfillment, knowing that I had a part in putting forth into the world a physician who will be trustworthy, patient-centered, and always in pursuit of continuing education and self-improvement.

On my student’s last day with us, there was a Thanksgiving potluck at the clinic. As she was saying thanks to the staff members who had been her colleagues over the last couple of years, a surge of mixed emotions overcame me. My student would not return after that day, so there was sadness. There was also pride in how “grown up” she was. She was no longer green and unsure. Rather, she was confident, mature, responsible, while still compassionate, humble, and driven to explore and learn. Above all, there was gratitude. After two and a half years of having the privilege to serve as my student’s preceptor, not only had I not ruined her outlook on medicine, but I had also been gifted with a renewed commitment and a purposeful future.

There are many people for me to thank: My program director who recommended me; my chair, who trusted me to learn on the job and perform; and the senior leaders at the medical school, who guided me as they allowed me the freedom to put my vision of what a first-year clerkship could be into reality. I participated in the process that resulted in full accreditation of our avant-garde school, and I witnessed the construction of our school building near the historic grounds of what was once Fort Worth Medical College, the school that had graduated Dr. Frances Daisy Emery Allen, the first woman to complete medical school in Texas. I am thankful to be connected to this exciting part of Fort Worth history as our school is making history again with innovative and progressive initiatives in medical education.

I thank my medical student. She made me a better physician, a better educator, and a much better person altogether. As I have also completed my MPH degree at the same time as this transition, it feels as if I am being propelled into a new phase of my career while she begins the next step in hers. I am full of hope and optimism. I have no doubt I will feel sadness for each subsequent medical student when their time with me is concluded, but I also know that I will feel pride and gratitude over and over and that will serve as fuel for me to continue my work in healthcare.

Notes:

1. This experience changed my career and could also impact yours. Please reach out if you are interested in learning more. An LIC student in their second year may be in the pediatric clinic one morning, the psychiatry clinic in the afternoon, and the operating room the next day. For each core clerkship, they are paired with a preceptor, and they go to each clerkship every week for nearly a year. Hence, it is longitudinal, and the idea is that the student will integrate knowledge and skills from concurrent clerkships to make them better-rounded physicians, and they will not forget information like they might in block rotations. This is a curriculum design known as interleaving. Another component of LIC is for each student to have a panel of patients that they follow over many months to strengthen their ability to deliver empathetic, patient-centered care in addition to learning about disease progression over time. Patients often value these relationships with the medical students and feel more satisfied with the quality of their care.

My Journey to DREAM

by Jackson Tobler, OMS-I

When I first met Alex in high school, I never anticipated that we’d become life-long friends. Alex has an intellectual and developmental disability (IDD), and we met through Best Buddies—an organization that promotes inclusion and friendship for individuals with disabilities. Alex and I developed a good friendship in high school, and we still maintain it today. We talk on the phone each week, and he participates in my family’s March Madness bracket pool each year. He lives in a different state now, but I was recently able to fly out to visit him and his family. His face lit up when I surprised him at his door, and we enjoyed spending a few days together. I am grateful for my long-lasting friendship with Alex and that I have gotten to know him beyond his intellectual disability. Meeting Alex in high school is what first sparked my desire to serve the IDD community—a desire that grew during college and has continued into medical school.

As an undergraduate student, I expanded my involvement with the IDD community by becoming president of my university’s Best Buddies chapter. I got to connect students to community members with IDD and plan fun events celebrating inclusion. Some of our biggest events were a talent show, a bowling night, and a Halloween party. I was moved when one of the parents told me how much our program meant to her adult son with Down syndrome. She shared that her son sometimes felt lonely or excluded, but our events provided him a welcoming environment where he felt he could belong. This experience showed me the power of inclusion.

When I began medical school at TCOM, I was excited to discover the DREAM student organization. DREAM, which stands for Disability Rights, Education, and Advocacy in Medicine, has allowed me to merge my interest in the IDD community with my career in medicine. DREAM’s mission is to advocate for individuals with disabilities and to prepare future health professionals to care for their unique needs. I attended the first meeting and was inspired by the story of DREAM’s faculty advisor, Brandie Wiley. Brandie is the mother of three adopted children with disabilities. She shared some of the challenges that her children have faced when receiving healthcare, such as barriers in accessibility and communication. She also detailed the qualities she saw in the physicians who were best able to interact with her daughter. Hearing Brandie’s experiences strengthened my desire to advocate for patients with disabilities.

I became a first-year representative on DREAM’s leadership team, which we aptly call “the DREAM team.” We began planning DREAM’s main event of the year, Project Dream Big. In collaboration with Special Olympics Texas and the Fort Worth ISD Boulevard Heights School and Transition Center, we arranged to host over 50 individuals with intellectual disabilities on campus. We planned to pair them with medical student volunteers for an afternoon of games, crafts, physical exams, and a multi-specialty provider panel. The goal of the event was to help medical students learn inclusive healthcare principles and to help the individuals with IDD become more comfortable around medical professionals.

After months of planning, the event successfully came together. As the Special Olympics athletes arrived, it was rewarding to watch them mingle with the medical students and bond at the cornhole and coloring stations. When the physical exam portion began, the medical students were instructed by physician faculty on how to properly obtain consent from individuals with IDD. It was a valuable experience to practice our bedside manner and physical exam knowledge on a different demographic, one that we get little exposure to in the normal curriculum. Connecting with the individuals in both a casual and a clinical setting that day was impactful for everyone. This exposure is helping us become compassionate future physicians and equipping us with the tools to provide quality care for our friends with IDD.

From high school to medical school, advocating for individuals with intellectual disabilities has been a meaningful part of my journey. Each experience—from developing a friendship with Alex, to leading my college’s Best Buddies chapter, and now being involved with DREAM—has reinforced the importance of inclusion, empathy, and advocacy for individuals with IDD. Each step has influenced the kind of physician that I aspire to be. As I continue my medical training and involvement with DREAM, I look forward to more opportunities to help create a healthcare environment that is compassionate, inclusive, and equitable for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.