Join us as we sit down with Dr. Julie Philley, the executive vice president for Health Affairs at UT Tyler. She takes us on a journey through the university’s four health affairs components – the medical school, a School of Nursing, the Fisch College of Pharmacy and the School of Health Professions. Hear about the inaugural class of 40 medical students, the university’s drive to attract local talent, and the critical care pathways it’s forging. The School of Nursing is also expanding, a response to the high demand.
The excitement doesn’t stop there. UT Tyler is going through a significant growth spurt, and Philley gives us a peek into the institution’s future plans.
JEFF JOHNSON (announcer): 0:04
UT Tyler is deeply involved in health care education and training, with degree programs in nursing, pharmacy, health sciences and more, plus a medical school under construction and the university’s partnership in the UT Health East Texas health care system. To better understand this commitment to the health of the people of our region, UT Tyler Radio Connects with the executive vice president for Health Affairs of UT Tyler, Dr. Julie Philly. Here’s your host, Mike Landess.
MIKE LANDESS (host): 0:29
Now you oversee four components of Health Affairs. What are they and please tell us more about them.
DR. JULIE PHILLEY (guest): 0:35
I am so lucky. I think I have the best job on the planet, actually. But I’m a physician by training. What I do is help run all of the things related to health in the university. So that’s our new School of Medicine, which, as you know, we started this summer. We have 40 students in our class. It’s also our School of Nursing, which is one of the largest nursing schools in the state of Texas. It’s our Fisch College of Pharmacy, and it’s our School of Health Professions, and so those four distinct entities make up what we call Health Affairs for UT Tyler.
LANDESS: 1:07
And how are they doing?
PHILLEY: 1:09
Oh gosh, where do I begin, Mike? Things are just moving so fast in so many different directions. Let me start with our School of Medicine. I mentioned, you know, we just enrolled our first class of 40, but we began this year with a bang. The governor was here for our groundbreaking, for our 250,000 square-foot building that we’re building in the medical district downtown, right attached to UT Health East Texas Tyler. And the governor, you know, kicked us off, and if you drive down Beckham, you’ll just see an incredible amount of progress on that building, hoping that will be open in 2025. The students right now, you know, have started their enrolled there at our North campus, out on 271 and 155, coming to class and learning and studying anatomy, all the things you think about with medical school. And we’re busy interviewing for our next class. Can you imagine that there’s like over 6,000 applications to medical school? We accept 40. We’re interviewing just over 200 students for that class. So incredible amount of work going on for the teams. I’m also really proud to report that the majority of our medical students either grew up or have some connection to East Texas
LANDESS: It’s really 95%, isn’t it?
PHILLEY: You’re exactly right, and we may hit 100% in this upcoming class. So you can imagine how excited they are. But these are our, these are our hometown, our hometown kids, and looking out there and seeing people you go to church with or you helped raise, it’s just really heartwarming.
LANDESS: 2:41
Let me just say that part. There’s a method to this madness of having all East Texans in there, because what do you ultimately want the outcome to be?
PHILLEY: 2:49
We want them to stay here and take care of us as we get older. There is a method to the madness, and it’s kind of a complicated system in some regards. Of course, we care that these students are smart — they have to have good grades, they have to have good test scores. But after that, we kind of deem that they are qualified to do the academic rigors of med school. After that, we just focus on the person, just trying to get the very best people with the very best ideals and goals to help really take care of the next generation of East Texans. And so these are just great people.
LANDESS: 3:27
Now we talked about this particular class and how it’s doing. Tell me about class number two. What have you learned from class number one that’ll carry over into class number two at this point?
PHILLEY: 3:38
Well, at this point, I am hoping we can replicate the quality of students for class number two. You know, when we started this medical school and, by the way, I grew up in Overton, so I know a lot about East Texas and what people think about the quality of our students. But when we started this, they said are there any good, really smart kids that can, are there enough, are there enough smart kids in East Texas who can go to medical school? And you know, what has been heartwarmingly exciting is that there are tons of qualified applicants in this region, and we’re focusing on those students and really hoping that we can attract them to stay here and then practice in East Texas.
LANDESS: 4:18
Let me go back to building projects. You mentioned that the School of Nursing is one of them. The School of Nursing has just been amazing in terms of its growth, its reach, and now it’s getting a new building. Tell us a little bit about that program and the high points from this past year.
PHILLEY: 4:33
Boy, I mentioned that our School of Nursing is large. About 20% of our student body at UT Tyler has either declared nursing as a major or is in our nursing school. So, my goodness, don’t you know we need them in the workforce. So we can’t train enough. Of course, we have to have the facilities to be able to do that. So we broke ground, another groundbreaking this year. We broke ground on our new School of Nursing addition right here on the UT Tyler campus. And that should hopefully be ready by the end of next year, but really trying to focus on training as many nurses as we can. Another thing I wanted to mention that we are so excited about is that we were able to start and develop what we were calling “Critical Care Pathways.” And so if you are someone who wants to be a critical care nurse, what does that mean? Somebody who works in the ICU maybe, or takes care of trauma, or does flight nursing or works in an emergency room. We’re going to really focus on advanced training for those types of individuals, and as a part of that, we’ve received approval to start what’s called a CRNA program, a certified registered nurse anesthetist. These are nurses who can help deliver anesthesia along with anesthesiologists. And these are very prestigious programs in nursing school, and so we’re just so thrilled to have the green light to start some of these things that we hope we’ll see up and running as soon as 2024.
LANDESS: 5:56
Now the flight nurse program is an interesting component here in East Texas and frankly, across the country.
PHILLEY: 6:02
It is. It is. Very few programs exist in the United States for what we’d like to build. What we are hoping to build is an actual flight simulator that would be housed within our School of Nursing, and that people can actually come in and train for critical care situations in a simulator that feels very much like you’re riding in a chopper. So you know that’s not for everyone; it might not be for me, but it sure will be a benefit to the people who get to undertake that program.
LANDESS: 6:30
Hello, LeTourneau. Can we borrow one of your simulators?
PHILLEY: 6:33
Yes, I mean my goodness, borrow on the expertise we already have in this region, right?
LANDESS: 6:37
Right, exactly. Tell me about your biggest win this past year, something you look back on and say, man, I can’t believe we got through that, or we accomplished that, or what’s the one that you’re the proudest of so far.
PHILLEY: 6:51
Oh well, listen, I wake up every day just incredibly grateful for the opportunity to even be a part of all of this. You know, it’s definitely something bigger than ourselves that has caused all of this to happen at UT Tyler and just so, so grateful for the support that we’ve received, both from, you know, the Chair of the Board of Regents Kevin Eltife, who’s just moved mountains to advocate for this region, and so many of our elected officials, and so just you know, so many people have made these things happen. So I’m just grateful to be a part of it. But I would say one of the biggest wins we’ve had is really the level of talent that we are recruiting now to either stay in this region or move to this region to help guide these programs. I am so honored to work with the Dean of our School of Medicine, Brig Willis, but we’ve been able to also this year recruit two other deans: Dean Amy Schwartz, over our Fisch College of Pharmacy, which you know, how the Fisch family and this college has impacted this region, and also Dean Teresa Byrd. Dr. Teresa Byrd is over our School of Health Professions, and so we were, just the level of talent, and these are just a few examples of some of the types of people that we’re getting to come and help lead these programs. And I could name so many names about other types of doctors and nurses and other health care professionals who are coming. But boy, if you can just try to hire people better than yourself, you really see things start to grow and expand. And that’s kind of our motto and what we’re trying to do.
LANDESS: 8:21
Of the three people you named, I would like to point out that we’ve had the opportunity to interview all three. Brig Willis has been here a couple of times, and I have to say the thing that I’m most impressed with him in particular — I’m impressed with all of them, believe me. I think they’re all fantastic people, and they were very interesting to talk to. Brig has just become a part of this community, and as I understood it from Dr. (Kirk) Calhoun (UT Tyler president), that was part of the reason he was hired, that he understands bringing in that component of people who want to learn and stay.
PHILLEY: 8:52
You are exactly right, and in fact you know, typical medical schools have three pillars. Three pillars — it’s taking care of patients, it’s training and/or education, and then it’s research. But Brig came in, and he developed a fourth pillar, and it’s community. Everything we do is about our communities. It’s about East Texas, and it’s about serving others. And again, you can’t build these programs without leadership.
LANDESS: 9:18
I was thinking that someone from the outside perhaps moved to this area. They see Christus, they see UT Health, they see Bethesda. They see a lot of different things that are going on in the area and perhaps the first impression is that there’s competition, and to some extent I guess that’s always true. But one of the things you talked about in the convocation was partnerships and working together, particularly with the medical school coming on.
PHILLEY: 9:42
Absolutely, absolutely. And you know, first and foremost, we’re citizens in this town. I am so proud of all of our health care facilities. We offer great care to East Texans. The places you mentioned, Bethesda, Christus, Baylor Scott & White, others, I mean, just these are just really great people. And what the School of Medicine does and actually all of our health programs — they bind us together under one common theme, and that is training the workforce of East Texas and taking care of each other. We need everyone.
LANDESS: 10:14
So let’s talk about areas of focus for 2024. I mean, you’ve got two major construction projects, obviously. You have a second class that you’re trying to vet now and go through. By the way, we should point out, these are two classes that have been paid for, for their entire term of learning and right up front by this community. That’s amazing and, in the words of Dr. Calhoun, if there’s anybody else out there who’d like to step forward and pick up class number three and four, that’d be great.
PHILLEY: 10:43
Oh, wouldn’t that be welcome? I mean, and can you even imagine the opportunity to go to medical school, fully paid for? Yeah, I just, it’s just just. There’s really no words to really describe it, is there? What’s going on in 24?
Well, first of all, you know, we’ve grown so much and so quickly. We have to honor the commitments that we’ve made and make sure that we’re really providing excellent programs and excellent service to our learners. And so we are, we’re always going to put that at the forefront of what we need to do. I think, again, we’re continuing just to recruit great physicians to this region, and so we do have open positions, that open recruits that are coming along. And then another thing is it’s hard to imagine, but after medical school, after your four years of medical school, you have to do more training, and that’s called a residency, and those can last between 3 and 5 years. And it’s very difficult to imagine, but we have over 188 residents in training with us right now. By next summer, we’ll be well over 200. And so, you know, making sure that we’re taking care of everyone is a full-time job, and so we’ll be basically doing that in 2024.
LANDESS: 11:57
Do you ever feel just overwhelmed by the responsibility that you’ve taken on here in terms of trying to help guide this giant ship through these waters?
PHILLEY: 12:09
Oh, you know, I just pinched myself really, and just I’m just, really just grateful to be a part of it. Again, you’ve just got to hire people who are better than you are, with vision and passion and commitment to what we’re trying to build, so that our culture’s strong. And I’m, like I said, I’m just, I’m just grateful to be a part of it.
LANDESS: 12:31
Any final thoughts you’d like to share?
PHILLEY: 12:34
Just that if the community and if the region needs it, UT Tyler plans to build it and just have excellent programs and really just give, give our students and our patients a chance for a better life through through what we’re trying to accomplish. We need everyone’s support. That can come in a variety of ways, but just really appreciate the opportunity to be here with you today.
JOHNSON: 12:57
Thanks for listening to UT Tyler Radio Connects with Dr. Julie Philley, the executive vice president for Health Affairs at The University of Texas at Tyler. For a transcript of this episode, visit our website uttylerradio.org. To be notified of future episodes, subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. For Mike Landess, I’m Jeff Johnson. Thanks for listening to UT Tyler Radio Connects from UT Tyler Radio 99.7 FM.
(Transcripts are automatically generated and may contain phonetic spellings and other spelling and punctuation errors. Grammar errors contained in the original recording are not typically corrected.)
