Sharmila Makhija, MD, MBA, founding Dean and CEO of the Alice L. Walton School of Medicine in Bentonville, Ark., recently joined Becker's to share her vision and goals for the school.
The Alice L. Walton School of Medicine, founded by its namesake, Alice Walton, daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton, was first announced in 2021. Since then, construction has been initiated and leadership positions have been appointed.
Question: As a new dean, what are your primary goals and vision for the institution?
Dr. Sharmila Makhija: Alice Walton founded the school back in 2021, and her goals were to improve the health and well-being of our community. She wanted to create a pipeline of physicians to serve the community, trained in a whole-person approach to care. We feel the best way to do this is by addressing a person’s physical, mental, social and emotional health. That's what we consider to be whole-person care. This was based on Ms. Walton's experiences with her own health. This approach resonated with me. Most likely, each of us have had something that's happened either to our own health or to a loved one’s health, and then all of a sudden you are in the healthcare system, trying to figure out how to get the care you need. Though I'm a physician and I'm a part of the healthcare system, you have a different perspective when you are managing your own health, or someone you care about, while going through the healthcare system. As much as we try to manage the work we do in healthcare , it's not necessarily easy for everyone to maneuver through the system. I think that's where she and I really aligned — it shouldn't matter if you're a physician or you have connections, everyone should be able to access the care they need. And, taking care of one part of an illness doesn't address all the other aspects that contribute to an illness, including understanding preventative care. We plan to create a medical school that builds upon a curriculum of the foundational sciences and integrates a compassionate, inclusive and whole-person approach to health.
Q: It's great that's finally happening in healthcare.
SM: It's interesting, because I do think even when I trained many years ago, we were taught a whole-person approach. However, with the rapid increase in medical knowledge, especially in areas of diagnostics and technology, there is a clear limitation of time placed upon physicians and care team providers when seeing patients. This has limited our ability to spend time with patients. I often say to our teams that we are trained to take care of patients in the hospital, but we aren’t necessarily trained to care for them in the outpatient setting and prevent them from being hospitalized in the first place . The system doesn't really support that mindset, specifically with regard to payments, which drives how we manage patients. Though we eventually do learn how to care for patients in the outpatient setting, we want to proactively address that learning in medical school.
Q: Burnout has definitely been a hot topic for quite a while. It's been a hard balancing act for sure.
SM: That's right, burnout has become a real challenge for physicians and the entire healthcare team of providers .We want to start by addressing self-care tools for the students which will build resiliency and potentially reduce burnout. We want students to be able to learn how to take care of themselves so that they can, in turn, take better care of their patients. Communicating clearly and supportively is another area of learning we want to address. Providing whole-person care requires an integrated approach involving the entire health care team of providers. Learning how to work on those teams more effectively and respectfully to better address each other will allow for better care for patients.
Q: You mentioned that you plan on making a curriculum that helps the provider help themselves. What resources or courses will you offer to do that?
SM: This is all under active development, our goal is to address culture, the curriculum and the community. Specifically, embracing a culture of well-being that's rooted in self-care. Which then drives the curriculum design. We plan to provide health coaching, so the students can learn the tools to care for both their patients' well-being as well as themselves. It's very hard to coach someone else if you haven't been coached yourself.
Even our medical school building is designed to encourage an environment of well-being. Our community of Northwest Arkansas is the epicenter of nature trails and of world class art, and our building will be on the same campus as the Crystal Bridges Museum of Art and the Whole Health Institute, amongst nature trails. The school is located on 14 acres of green space, literally integrated with nature. The indoor spaces are very similar to what you see in most medical schools, including classrooms, a simulation center, a library, clinical teaching spaces, and a student lounge. What is unique is that the recreation and outdoor areas feature a meditation area, healing gardens, a wetland, outdoor classrooms and urban farming space. It's going to be open to the public as we want to be connected to the community.
Q: What else will the school do to boost community engagement?
SM: We're working with partners ranging from local medical centers as well as the Northwest Arkansas Council, which includes many area business owners and leaders of various community organizations. They were all part of the committee that interviewed me for this position.
We don't want to be a medical school that just closes its doors, sits behind a desk and creates a school from one perspective. We want input from the community we serve and actively listens and creates. Going forward we want to create a model that could be followed in other communities, focused on well-being and health.
Q: Do you mean between the students and staff or students and community? Or both?
SM: Our team culture of learning, listening and communicating with each other is so important to get right, in order to set an example for the students. The more we can help our students and faculty develop skills and tools to cope with adversity, the better they will be equipped to become more resilient. I believe that is one way to address burnout. And thus reduce the number of physicians and health care providers that are leaving medicine.
Q: What does the school plan on doing to address the financial burdens that come with going to medical school?
SM: We know that medical school is expensive and creates a financial burden for students. It can also drive choices in what specialty of medicine is chosen. Because of this, we are working through all details regarding tuition, and most likely we will include scholarships for those in need. We haven't worked out all the details, but addressing that is really important to us.