- The BYU School of Medicine will combine faith and science in its medical training.
- The key principles include a new integrated degree and a reduced-cost model.
- The accelerated path to a degree and low costs are designed to especially help international students.
PROVO — The key design elements for the planned BYU School of Medicine were set by the leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the inaugural dean of the BYU School of Medicine said this week.
The chief goal for the medical school is to support the mission of the church and BYU, Dr. Mark Ott said during a presentation Monday at the annual International Society conference at the Hinckley Center on campus.
Ott shared an experience he had with church President Russell M. Nelson, a legendary pioneer of heart surgery before he was called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ. Today he is the church’s prophet and president.
Ott said that when he and his wife, Stefanie, met with the church’s First Presidency, there was a moment when President Nelson looked off in the distance.
“In the coming decades,” President Nelson said, “the power of this school of medicine to take forward the mission and the work of the Church of Jesus Christ — of the Lord — is going to be far beyond anything that we can see here now.”
“It was wonderful to be sitting in his presence and hearing a prophecy,” Ott said, “and knowing that the prophet of the Lord could see something that I could not see. It was an unforgettable moment, and I look forward to living another 20 or 30 years so I can see what he saw, because I know it will happen, and that is part of our mission.”
The 5 key design elements for BYU’s School of Medicine
Medical science and research are among the five key design elements set by the First Presidency, Ott said.
At the same time, even though there already are other religious-based medical schools around the country — “and they all do a great work,” Ott said — BYU intends to be unique in the way it combines medical science and faith.
The five design elements are to:
- Be spiritually based and mission-focused.
- Have a teaching and research emphasis.
- Offer an integrated bachelor’s/medical degree to reduce time to complete medical training.
- Include international outreach, enrollment and alignment with church humanitarian efforts.
- Offer a reduced cost model.
“Those are the design principles that were given to us by the prophet and by the Lord himself,” Ott said.
That conviction gives him confidence as he pursues a dynamic timeline in an attempt to secure accreditation and open the doors to the first 60 students in fall 2027.
“It’s an exciting time and it’s a terrifying time, but we’re seeing over and over again the Lord’s hand in this process,” he said. He added, “When we’re on the Lord’s errand, we can expect his help.”
The spiritual mission of the BYU School of Medicine
BYU medical students will be taught that they need more than their human capacity to succeed, Ott said. The school will emphasize to students the importance of the covenants Latter-day Saints make with God through baptism and temple worship.
“We want our students to understand, first and foremost, that they are a child of a loving Heavenly Father, that they are a child of covenant and a disciple of Jesus Christ. Those three things that President Nelson talks about are very important,” he said.
The inaugural dean shared several experiences of ways he felt God was helping his team over the past six months. One related to the way medical schools are compressing what once was the first two years of lectures to somewhere between one year and 18 months. What would BYU do?
The working group addressing the issue struggled to reach a consensus. Ott said he attended the temple the next day and was struck by the increased capacity and endurance promised to those who make one of the covenants there. He also recalled a Latter-day Saint scripture that states, “Doubt not, fear not.” (Doctrine and Covenants 6:36)
“I knew if our students would honor their covenants, that they would be able to do a 12- to 15-month curriculum,” he said. Another committee member had the same experience, and the committee moved ahead.
BYU President Shane Reese also addressed the role spirituality can play in education at Monday’s event. He said the leader of a state university system recently told a conference of American university presidents that leaders in higher education needed to practice more humility and listen and learn from critics.
Reese added that schools also should practice an abundance of forgiveness.
“You see, these are gospel methodologies, and gospel methodologies will serve and solve the world’s problems in ways that secular ideologies cannot. They simply fall short,” he said.
What role will research play at the BYU School of Medicine?
Teaching students takes precedence over faculty research at BYU, a decadeslong practice restated again recently by church leaders and Reese. BYU does emphasize mentored research, with undergraduates conducting research under faculty supervision.
Ott reiterated that teaching will be the primary responsibility of the School of Medicine, but he said a focus on research must be built into the curriculum.
“We want these young women and men to learn the principles of science and to understand that asking questions and coming up with theories of how to address those questions and then implementing those theories and seeing if they hold up is a critical part of becoming a physician,” he said.
Such research can move health care forward.
“As important as it is to solve problems, it is even more necessary to find new solutions to problems so that we can put old problems in the rearview mirror and go on to newer problems that need to be addressed,” he said.
How the BYU medical school will offer accelerated training at low cost
One of the efforts of the 15 working groups building the plans for the school is to fulfill a vision to create a shorter and less expensive model.
“The Lord’s prophets would like to reduce the cost and shorten the time it takes to become a physician,” Ott said. “There’s a big demand on both time and money. So the (plan) is to develop an integrated pathway that lets you go from a bachelor’s degree into medical school in an accelerated fashion.”
He didn’t share any details about the integrated bachelor’s/medical degree, but he did say that students will still be able to enter the school in the traditional way of earning a bachelor’s degree at another school and applying to BYU as a first-year medical student.
He said church leaders wanted an alternative pathway that would save time and save money to help international students, especially.
The Church of Jesus Christ already subsidizes the tuition of every BYU student. The same will be true of the School of Medicine, making its tuition significantly lower than other medical schools. Part of the goal is to encourage the international students BYU hopes to attract to return and practice medicine in their home countries.
“That will be a blessing in the lives of our students, so they don’t accumulate as much debt that then drives career decisions about making money to pay that debt back,” Ott said. “We don’t do any favors to their communities if they stay here in North America and never go back and be great leaders in health care and leaders in the church in the countries of their origin.”
The medical school’s humanitarian emphasis
Ott said the advisory council and working groups continue to hone the way the school will reach the goal of aligning with the church’s humanitarian efforts.
“That research emphasis and that humanitarian emphasis is built into the curriculum, from the first day through the last day of the fourth year,” he said. “We want them to experience serving and understanding the needs of underserved populations and peoples throughout the world, and to be in those environments.”
Part of the faculty’s job will be to help students see that they need to be engaged in church and community service even while juggling the demands of medical education.
“One of the traps of medicine is that it is so demanding to learn and master this material that you can easily justify saying ... ‘I just need to focus on that,‘” Ott said. “My experience through the years is that those who do that, more often than not, don’t get back to (doing that).”
He wants students to understand that more time doesn’t materialize later, as responsibilities build.
“If you don’t learn to master them at each level, you become overwhelmed at the next level,” he said. “So that’s part of our process is helping them to understand that they need to serve in the church and in their families and in their communities while they’re doing this demanding work in school.”