{"id":474460,"date":"2026-10-23T12:16:30","date_gmt":"2026-10-23T12:16:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/474460\/"},"modified":"2026-10-23T12:16:30","modified_gmt":"2026-10-23T12:16:30","slug":"in-fort-worth-a-medical-school-focuses-on-patient-safety","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/474460\/","title":{"rendered":"In Fort Worth, a medical school focuses on patient safety"},"content":{"rendered":"

First-year medical<\/a> students are crowded inside the glass-walled room, a collection of small groups, each organized around a table and a model of a knee.<\/p>\n

Dr. Maxie Brewer, a hospitalist at Cook Children\u2019s Medical Center in Fort Worth, walks the students through the scenario. They\u2019ll be pulling fluid out of a septic knee joint. It\u2019s a simulation training, but they\u2019ll start with consents, asking the knee if it understands why they\u2019re doing this and the potential complications.<\/p>\n

Another professor, pediatric emergency physician Dr. Sam Selby, calls out a final instruction. If any of the students notice another student making a mistake, Selby says, they should help them out and remind them of what they missed.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s a quick prompt, but it points to a particular focus at the medical school: patient safety and error prevention<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine<\/a>, at UNT Health Fort Worth, is the only medical school in the country that requires students to take a specific national patient safety exam<\/a> as part of their curriculum.<\/p>\n

In addition to the safety principles that are baked into other courses, the Fort Worth medical students all take a two-week-long course during their third year, focused specifically on patient safety. At the end of the course, they\u2019ll take the Institute for Healthcare Improvement\u2019s patient safety exam, which is designed for healthcare<\/a> professionals.<\/p>\n

With this focus, Dr. Frank Filipetto and his Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine colleagues hope they\u2019re training a generation of doctors who can change a pernicious problem in medicine: preventable errors<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I wanted to be able to do was teach our medical students skills to change the way healthcare is delivered,\u201d Filipetto said. \u201cThat’s our vision.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The problem in healthcare<\/p>\n

\"Play\"How<\/p>\n

How this Texas college is making healthcare safer for patients<\/p>\n

Azul Sordo Ortiz Hernan, The Dallas Morning News<\/p>\n

Research studies and analyses have produced widely varying estimates of how many patients die each year due to preventable medical errors.<\/p>\n

One study estimated that number to be around 22,000 deaths<\/a> per year in the U.S. Another, much-cited analysis produced a different figure, at more than 250,000 deaths<\/a>. That larger figure, if accurate, would make preventable medical errors the third-leading cause of death<\/a> in the U.S., behind heart disease and cancer.<\/p>\n

No matter how you slice it, studies estimate there are, at a minimum, tens of thousands of patients dying each year due to mishaps that could have been prevented.<\/p>\n

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It bothers Filipetto that researchers don\u2019t know the real number. It bothers him that the number, whatever it is, is so high. And it bothers him that medical schools across the country aren\u2019t doing more to change that number.<\/p>\n

Most medical schools, Filipetto said, \u201cdo not teach patient safety to the degree that the current graduate of a medical school needs to know safety science. This is not a couple hours. This is not a lecture.\u201d<\/p>\n

Selby, the pediatric emergency physician, said patient safety wasn\u2019t a specific focus when he was in medical school.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think that it was something that was highlighted,\u201d Selby said. \u201cWe obviously wanted to be safe with how we were treating our patients, but I think putting a name to patient safety really helps to bring the awareness.\u201d<\/p>\n

While human error is unavoidable, experts say many medical errors stem from systemic issues<\/a> \u2014 a lack of proven processes to catch human error or a culture that doesn\u2019t encourage medical workers to speak up when they think something is wrong.<\/p>\n

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Both are things medical students can learn to change, Filipetto said. So when he became first the interim dean and then the dean of Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine \u2014 a position he held until 2024 \u2014 he vowed to make sure the school broke new ground.<\/p>\n

The solution?<\/p>\n

The Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine\u2019s patient safety course is concentrated into two weeks, during which the students sit in a four-hour class each afternoon and are expected to self-study each morning. Once the medical students have gone through the course, they take the Institute for Healthcare Improvement\u2019s exam.<\/p>\n

Patricia McGaffigan, a patient safety advocate at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, said this type of training can make patient safety into a core value for future healthcare providers.<\/p>\n

\u201cPatient safety is integral to everything we do in healthcare, regardless of role or specialty,\u201d McGaffigan said in an email. \u201cWhen we integrate patient safety as a cornerstone of healthcare education, we shape professional values and capabilities from the start.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The exam, according to the institute\u2019s website, has an overall pass rate of 75%. Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine students, according to Filipetto, have a first-time pass rate of 92%. Students who don\u2019t pass on the first time can take it again, Filipetto said, upping the pass rate to 98%.<\/p>\n

Lillee Gelinas, the college\u2019s patient safety director, said the focus is about more than the exam.<\/p>\n

\"Dr.<\/p>\n

Dr. Maxie Brewer works with medical students in the simulation center at UNT Health Fort Worth in Fort Worth, Monday, May 18, 2026.<\/p>\n

Smiley N. Pool\/The Dallas Morning News<\/p>\n

\u201cI really do think that, at scale, we’re putting physicians into practice with a whole different view about safety,\u201d Gelinas said.<\/p>\n

Filipetto tells his students that, if they speak up about a potential problem they see while they\u2019re working in clinical settings, he has their back. He wants them to report near misses, too, so that those things can be fixed before they harm a patient.<\/p>\n

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He wants them to practice speaking up.<\/p>\n

With that practice, he hopes his students will graduate with the tools they need to improve the health care system. That can feel like an overwhelming aim, but Filipetto doesn\u2019t mean it to be. He\u2019s talking about realistic change.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe system is the environment that you work in,\u201d he said. \u201cStart with your environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a drumbeat that the Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine professors repeat over and over.<\/p>\n

In a virtual class, which The Dallas Morning News sat in on, Dr. Albert Yurvati tells the students that, with their patient safety credentials, they\u2019ll head into their residencies with more safety training than the vast majority of their peers.<\/p>\n

Gelinas jumps in to underscore this.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe just emphasized that the majority of residents that touch a patient are not competent in patient safety. Is that hitting you?\u201d Gelinas asks. \u201cThe average patient assumes that the person walking in their room is competent in patient safety.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yurvati, like Filipetto, tells the students he\u2019ll protect them if they speak up about errors or oversights when they\u2019re working with patients.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the future, he tells them, they\u2019ll need to find that protection from their institutions. Yurvati hopes they will find a way to push patient safety forward, no matter where they work.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo not be afraid to speak up,\u201d Yurvati told the students. \u201cYou, as TCOM graduates, can make a difference.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Dallas Morning News’ Under the Knife investigation is part of the Association of Health Care Journalists’ U.S. Health System Reporting Fellowship, supported by The Commonwealth Fund.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"First-year medical students are crowded inside the glass-walled room, a collection of small groups, each organized around a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":474461,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":["post-474460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-worth","tag-fort-worth","tag-fort-worth-headlines","tag-fort-worth-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=474460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474460\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/474461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=474460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=474460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=474460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}