Medical Students Recognize Patients as Teachers Through MU’s Legacy Teachers™ Program

The Legacy Teachers™ program offers third-year medical students the opportunity to submit essays, artwork or poetry describing a patient they recognized as one of their greatest teachers. The Legacy Teachers luncheons scheduled in Columbia and Springfield were canceled this year because of the COVID-19 outbreak. This is the 15th year students have honored Legacy Teachers™ at the MU School of Medicine in Columbia and the second annual year for the Springfield clinical campus.

Though the luncheons were canceled, the Legacy Teachers and the third-year students who honored them will still be recognized.

“Each Legacy Teacher will receive a signed certificate of appreciation from the MU School of Medicine thanking them for teaching our students. They will also receive a copy of the program containing excerpts from the 32 submissions, as well as a photo of their student,” said Betsy Garrett, MD, professor emerita in the Department of Family and Community Medicine and director of the Legacy Teachers program.

Students involved will receive a certificate as well as a Legacy Teacher pin, which was created this year in recognition of the 15th anniversary of the program’s creation.

“We hope they will wear this pin throughout their training and beyond to remind us all that we must never stop learning from our patients, for they have so much to teach us,” Garrett said.

The original MU program has been adopted by other medical schools across the country, including the University of Kansas-Wichita, the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, East Carolina University Brody School of Medicine, Tufts University School of Medicine, Tufts-Maine, and the University of South Dakota Sanford School of Medicine.