Why I Teach
Why I Teach: With Dr. Jessica Burchette
When Dr. Jessica Burchette joined Bill Gatton College of Pharmacy faculty in 2012, she was no stranger to the college or its mission.
Burchette had the distinction of being a member of the college’s inaugural graduating class in 2010.
Returning to the college as a faculty member has been rewarding for Burchette, who enjoys connecting with her students in the classroom and at her practice site at Holston Valley Medical Center, where she works with interdisciplinary inpatient family medicine teams.
“When I’m in my practice site at Holston Valley with the students on their fourth-year rotation, I’m able to reinforce what they know and show them how all the knowledge they’ve gained over those three years in the classroom are coming to fruition,” Burchette said. “They’re able to use that with their patients and they can really see what their role is and how they can make a difference in patients’ lives.”
Burchette enjoys her work with patients and says the experience helps her better prepare student pharmacists for the ever-evolving needs in health care.
“Medicine and health care turn over so quickly, and so the information that we teach in the classroom could be outdated before the students even graduate,” she said.
Burchette said she strives to prepare student pharmacists to be lifelong learners and to learn to keep with and digest new information to meet the needs of their patients.
“To use the old adage, we want to ‘teach them how to fish,’” she said.
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Dr. Jessica Burchette:
Medicine and health care turn over so quickly. And so the information that we teach in the classroom could be outdated before they even graduate. So we really want to, you know, to use the old adage, we want to teach them to fish. They have to know how to go out and teach themselves and keep up with the information and digest that information for their own lifelong learning and also for the benefit of their patients.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle:
Hi, I'm Kimberly McCorkle, Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs at East Tennessee State University. From the moment I arrived on this campus, I have been inspired by our faculty. Their passion for what they do. Their belief in the power of higher education. And the way they are transforming the lives of their students. This podcast is dedicated to them, our incredible faculty at ETSU. Hear their stories as they tell us Why I Teach. In this episode, we will talk with Dr. Jessica Burchette, Associate Professor of Pharmacy Practice at ETSU Bill Gatton College of Pharmacy. Not only has Dr. Burchette taught at Gatton College of Pharmacy since 2012, she has also had the distinction of being a proud member of the college's inaugural graduating class from 2010. Upon her graduation from Gatton, she obtained further postgraduate training with a pharmacy practice residency at the University of Tennessee Medical Center, followed by an internal medicine residency with a secondary focus in academia at Gatton College of Pharmacy. She maintains a practice site at Holston Valley Medical Center, working with interdisciplinary inpatient family medicine teams. In addition to her practice, Dr. Burchette enjoys teaching students about pulmonary disorders and basic critical-care concepts in the classroom. Enjoy the show. Dr. Burchette, welcome to the show.
Dr. Jessica Burchette:
Thank you so much for having me, Dr. McCorkle.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle:
I start my podcast with the same question for every guest. Take me back to your first day of teaching at ETSU as a faculty member, and looking back on that day,
what is one piece of advice that you would have given yourself?
Dr. Jessica Burchette:
You know, that is such a great question and something that I think about as I grow further in my career and the things that I've learned over the years. And I think I would probably tell myself on that first day to be okay in the chaos. Learning to balance all the roles of being a faculty member with a clinical practice and realizing that just because a task isn't completed, it doesn't mean you're not making progress. And so those incremental steps forward, it doesn't always feel like a big win, but that can become overwhelming if you don't look at the steps. And so that's one thing I had to teach myself as I got into my first few years as a faculty member. And I feel like I've gotten better at that, but always a work in progress.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle:
Such important advice. So as a practicing pharmacist, much of your work takes place outside the walls of the traditional classroom setting. How does your continued work with patients shape the way that you teach your students?
Dr. Jessica Burchette:
There are so many ways that my patients help me teach and shape my students. Starting in the classroom actually is where I'm able to use my patients to give the students some context and relevance. Many of our students have never practiced or been in a hospital pharmacy setting, and they may have not worked with patients at all prior to starting our program. So as we're talking about diseases and disorders and different medications to treat those, they often don't have the context to know why that matters. And so using those patients' stories and those patient experiences to give them a little anchor to hold on to with that information really helps with their retention. When I'm in my practice site at Holston Valley with the students that, students on their fourth-year rotation, I'm able to then reinforce what they know and show them how all the knowledge they've gained over those three years in the classroom are coming to fruition and they're able to use that with their patients, and they can really see what their role is and how they can make a difference for patients' lives. I think ultimately one thing that my patients are able to really help me with is teaching my students that you can't know everything. So it's really important to me to be honest with my students that I don't know all the answers, but we can find them together. I think that gives, you know, as a faculty member, oftentimes they feel like you're invincible and you must know it all because you're a faculty member. And that's far from the truth. So giving that little bit of humanization to where they feel more comfortable with you and asking you questions, my patients are able to do that a lot because we encounter different situations that we need to look things up and figure out the best plan and approach.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle:
What a valuable lesson for your students.
Dr. Jessica Burchette:
It really is.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle:
So you get to work with them in the patient setting early in their programs and then later in their programs as well?
Dr. Jessica Burchette:
I do. I'm very fortunate. I have the chance to work with what we call our IPPE students, that's introductory pharmacy practice experiences. So after the second year, the students do a two-week clinical rotation where they really get to put their toes in the water and see how some things are coming together. And I really enjoy that because they're so eager, and they're so excited. Sometimes they're nervous. But I think just seeing how it works really helps them hold on to the information and also feel like they can see their purpose as they move forward. And then in that last year, as fourth-year students, honestly, one of my favorite things about my job is watching the lights come on for those fourth-year students, when they realize, oh, this is how this works, and this is how I can impact patients, and getting to know them as people, you know, on those fourth-year rotations because in the classroom, oftentimes it's hard to get to know them one on one.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle:
Right.
Dr. Jessica Burchette:
Unless they decide to come up to your office or they reach out. So the chance to spend one-on-one time with small groups on rotation is really special to me. And I take a lot of memories, and I've made a lot of connections and actually lifelong friendships with some of my students based on that experience.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle:
So I understand that you've been working to streamline the curriculum in Gatton to prepare student pharmacists for the evolving health care environment. What is that new curriculum going to look like for our students, and how will it prepare them better to sort of understand the needs of patients as you've just talked about?
Dr. Jessica Burchette:
That's a great question, and we have been feverishly working at Gatton over the last 18 months to really look at how can we best prepare our students to be graduate-level pharmacists and to go out and impact the community from day one.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle:
Yeah.
Dr. Jessica Burchette:
So one thing we looked at was the number of credit hours in our didactic curriculum, and in an honest assessment, we, we felt like it was probably too much. We were packing too much into the day, and we weren't giving students time to digest and really build the material, scaffold the material over time so that they were able to put the pieces together.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle:
Yeah.
Dr. Jessica Burchette:
The first tenet or principle that we looked at with our curricular philosophy for revision was essentialism and efficiency. Being efficient with a student's time, making sure that the essential concepts they need to carry forward for patient care are at top priority.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle:
Right.
Dr. Jessica Burchette:
The other benefit of cutting those didactic hours is we have freed up time for students to have more hands-on experience.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle:
Right.
Dr. Jessica Burchette:
Which is so important. That's really where the majority of their learning is going to come from and the retention of that knowledge and information. So we've been able to add more IPPE experiences where students are going to have the chance to really solidify some basic concepts prior to going into their fourth year, and then really excited about the fact that we're adding a fourth excuse me, a fourth-year additional rotation. So currently our students do nine four-week rotations, so they get 36 weeks of hands-on experience. And with this, they're going to have the opportunity to add four more weeks to their experience in a direct patient-care environment.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle:
Yeah.
Dr. Jessica Burchette:
So they'll be working directly with patients and really impacting them one on one, working with other providers. So those benefits of realigning our didactic curriculum have been beneficial. The last thing I'll say about that is medicine and health care turn over so quickly. And so the information that we teach in the classroom could be outdated before they even graduate. So we really want to, you know, to use the old adage, we want to teach them to fish. They have to know how to go out and teach themselves and keep up with the information and digest that information for their own lifelong learning and also for the benefit of their patients. So that's also the accountability piece of our curricular philosophy, is allowing us to hold the students accountable for some of their own learning and really teaching them how to do that efficiently.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle:
That's really interesting that you were able to do that with the curriculum realignment, and I'm certain that that additional hands-on learning will help build their confidence and their skills before they go out to practice.
Dr. Jessica Burchette:
Yeah, we really think so. And we're seeing some of the fruits of that already. So the IPPE curriculum, we were able to revise that curriculum starting in the fall of 2022. So we have, we're one year into that revision, and we've had really great feedback from both the preceptors and the students on what they see as ways that we can better impact their education and their learning. And luckily, those, the things that we heard from the students were the things that we were thinking as faculty. So having that reinforcement that we were on the right track from a student perspective was really important.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle:
At ETSU, as you well know, we prioritize the importance of community-engaged learning, and you've just described some of the work that you've done in that space as a faculty member. So tell us more about some of the hands-on community-engaged-learning experiences that our student pharmacists participate in during their time at Gatton.
Dr. Jessica Burchette:
One of the things we really pride ourselves on is the chance for students to impact the community from day one; from the very beginning, they receive their training to administer immunizations. So from day one, they're able to go out and actually give patient care to patients through flu-vaccine clinics.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle:
Yeah.
Dr. Jessica Burchette:
COVID vaccine clinics have been a large staple of our community engagement over the last few years. But there's so many other ways that they engage. We participate with RAM, Rural Area Medical. Yeah. And the students help out with that. We have several underserved clinics that we volunteer with, such as Appalachian Miles for Smiles and the Health Wagon. Yeah. We also participate in drug-take-back events. One thing that we feel like plagues our area and is a concern is unused and expired medications that are in people's homes, and they oftentimes don't know how to safely dispose of those.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle:
Right.
Dr. Jessica Burchette:
So we have partnered with the Johnson City Police Department and the Fire Department, and we actually set up at various times throughout the year, and the students go out and help take those medications back for safe disposal. It's also a chance to actually educate the students in that and the patients on proper and safe use of medications. The best part about going back to the curricular piece that we just talked about is that because of that streamlining of the didactic curriculum, we're opening up so much more time for students to be engaged with the community.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle:
Right.
Dr. Jessica Burchette:
So we're starting a new core series that I'm so eager to see. It's called Personal Development and Community Engagement.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle:
Okay.
Dr. Jessica Burchette:
And that will run across all three of the first didactic years. And students are going to have a menu approach. So we're going to have a menu of opportunities and activities that we think students could benefit from. And then our goal is to encourage them to pick the things they feel passionate about and get involved with the community in that way and really see how they can fit in, even if it's not pharmacy related. We do a lot of philanthropy with area elementary schools, doing Christmas gifts and food baskets and other type of activities like that. So just empowering them from day one to realize that you can make a difference in your community is really important. And we're really excited about the direction that we're able to move with that.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle:
That is so exciting to hear about the expanded opportunities, I think to continue the work that Gatton has done from the beginning. And I know that the students and faculty have been recognized at a national level for some of this work, right?
Dr. Jessica Burchette:
Absolutely. We've won several national awards. Dr. Sarah Melton Thomason has been instrumental with some of our national awards with Generation Rx, and that really focuses around educating the community on opioid use disorder and how to reverse opioid overdose.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle:
Yeah.
Dr. Jessica Burchette:
So, we do naloxone training and administer free naloxone to the community and to health care providers to have available in case they run into a situation and they find that they're within a medical emergency. We've had other awards through our student organizations that have been recognized at the national level for their work and for giving back to their communities.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle:
Yeah.
Dr. Jessica Burchette:
We recently were awarded the Lawrence Weaver Award, which is a recognition of how we as a college have impacted our community at large, and we were selected nationally for that recognition.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle:
That's outstanding. The work that you've described in expanding the number of community-engaged-learning opportunities for students certainly requires a considerable time commitment by faculty. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
Dr. Jessica Burchette:
Absolutely. One thing I will say about Gatton, and I really feel like ETSU as a whole, is we are a family, and we treat each other in the faculty and the staff as family. And we also see our students as an extension of that family. And when they're with us for four years, they're our family, and they're always our family, even upon graduation. But the chance to really watch them grow and see the opportunities and the ways that they can get engaged, it does take work on the part of the faculty.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle:
Yeah.
Dr. Jessica Burchette:
Our faculty are passionate about engaging the students and also engaging in the community. And so while it is a workload, it's also a labor of love because it really is something that we feel passionate about and we want to do for our community as well.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle:
Yeah, and as teachers.
Dr. Jessica Burchette:
As teachers, exactly. You know, teaching people to just be good humans and be good stewards of your time and of your wisdom and the things that you can provide to other people.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle:
As you know, ETSU has a robust offering of programs across the health care disciplines, including pharmacy, medicine, nursing, clinical and rehabilitative health sciences, and public health. In what ways do you see your students benefiting from these programs and the opportunities for interprofessional collaboration?
Dr. Jessica Burchette:
That is such a great benefit to our students, and I feel like we could do an entire hour series talking about all the benefits of the interprofessional collaboration, and lucky for our students, it starts from day one. They have an interprofessional communications course that they start out with learning how to talk to patients with the other disciplines, so the medicine, the nursing, the psychology students are there. They also work with the interprofessional program that's located in Bishop Hall, and they have several different activities that they perform; they are learning how to work in teams, learning how to manage conflict, and learning how to also look at patients and social determinants of health to figure out how can you best impact them. I think what I see for my students most often is they don't always know their value and how they can be valuable to patients. And so sometimes working with the medical students, especially on those clinical rotations, they're a little intimidated at first because they're like, "Oh my, oh my goodness, this person's going to be a physician, and how on Earth could I help them in any way?" And so watching them work together and fill in those knowledge gaps for each other, watching the medical students and the nursing students teach my pharmacy students about the diagnostics and understanding what's going on with the patient, knowing how to read a chest X-ray, or looking at interesting findings on labs, and then my students to be able to say, "Oh, I know how I can fix that. I know how I can help you fix that for this patient with these medications" and educating them on how medications work and the side effects, educating the patients. So, it really gives our students a chance and I think students across all the disciplines to know their role and their value and how it really takes a village to take care of patients.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle:
Yeah. We know that the best teachers are those who continue to learn. What are some of the most important lessons that you have learned from your students or your colleagues, and how do you continue to learn as a teacher?
Dr. Jessica Burchette:
That's, that's a great question. I think I'll start with my students because I think as a young faculty member, I underestimated how much I would learn from them over the years and how much I continue to learn. One thing I feel like it's very easy to fall into as a faculty is to take credit for high-performing students, but then be like, oh, well, this student didn't do so well, but that can't be my fault, right? That must be the student's fault. Right. And so really looking across the continuum of your learners and saying you can't pick and choose which of those learners you impact. So meeting the student where they are and helping them grow in whatever area they need to grow in to get to the next step, that's so important, and my students teach me that all the time. I may be standing in the classroom, and I think, "Wow; I really knocked that out of the park. They all know it so well. There's no way they'll get this wrong. And then we talk about it later, and I realize I missed the mark. We need to review that, and I need to review the way that I've covered that for you. So my students teach me that I always have to be on my toes, and I'm so thankful for them. They also give me such encouragement.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle:
Yes.
Dr. Jessica Burchette:
You know, there are days where you think, "Hmm, what am I doing here?"
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle:
Right.
Dr. Jessica Burchette:
Should I, should I do something else? And then you have that moment with a student or with a group of students, and you realize this is exactly where I want to be. And these are, these are the people, these are the reasons why I want to do this.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle:
It's the best, right?
Dr. Jessica Burchette:
It is the best. It is. It is really the, you know, it's that soul fuel that you need to really continue on with your journey.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle:
Yeah.
Dr. Jessica Burchette:
My colleagues have been so generous with their knowledge and with their encouragement as well. We have a joke at the College of Pharmacy; there are four faculty, including myself, who all started at the same time. And so we were all what we call junior faculty.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle:
Yeah.
Dr. Jessica Burchette:
So we call ourselves the junior faculty for life because we really, you know, we work as a team, and we encourage each other, and we're there to help each other. But it expands beyond that group. You know, all the faculty have been so generous. I think one thing that the late Brian Odle, he passed away a couple of years ago, and he was so impactful for me. He was also my clinical partner.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle:
Yeah.
Dr. Jessica Burchette:
So I got a lot of time to work with Brian one on one, and he taught me to be yourself. You know, you really have to be comfortable in who you are -- right -- and how you can move forward in that and not try to be anybody else. That was really important. And I would also say that Dr. David Stewart specifically has been a huge mentor for me. He was my residency program director. He's mentored me through faculty. And now we work very closely together with the curriculum.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle:
Yeah.
Dr. Jessica Burchette:
And he's really taught me a lot about contentment and knowing that there's always going to be an opportunity. So you're, you may in the moment, you may feel overwhelmed, you may not be able to see the vision of where you're going, but you just keep marching forward with that, and that door will open up, and it will be there, and it will all fall into the places that you hope to see it fall into. So he's really taught me about being content in the place I'm at, but also striving for more. And I think that's a really important balance as especially a mid-level faculty.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle:
Yeah.
Dr. Jessica Burchette:
You know, so.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle:
What a valuable lesson from a colleague.
Dr. Jessica Burchette:
So valuable.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle:
That's lovely.
Dr. Jessica Burchette:
I'm very fortunate to the group I work with. I'm extremely fortunate.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle:
So the Gatton College of Pharmacy has a wonderful tradition called Prescription for Success, where the graduates choose faculty members to share their wisdom with the class. And this year, the class of 2023 chose you for this honor, and I had the honor of being able to attend that event. I think it was one of my favorite events throughout the entire academic year that I got to attend. Can you talk about what that event meant to you and the connections that you've made over the years with your students?
Dr. Jessica Burchette:
Absolutely. I agree. That is my favorite day of the entire year.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle:
Yeah.
Dr. Jessica Burchette:
It's our last chance to really be just as a as a college with the graduating students. The next day they graduate, and that's really about their families and them celebrating with their families and their friends. And we don't always get the chance to give them those hugs on graduation day because it's very busy.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle:
Yeah.
Dr. Jessica Burchette:
But that Prescriptions for Success day is really our chance to see their final product and to tell them how proud we are of them and to hear what their plans are for moving forward. So it is a very special day, and being asked to speak is one of the most thoughtful things that happens as a faculty member. It's one of our highest honors at the college because you get a few minutes just to say a last bit of advice to that graduating class and to look out on their faces and remember all the journey that have gotten you there. So it is by far my favorite event. And it's also the thing that I get most nervous about every year.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle:
Yes.
Dr. Jessica Burchette:
Because it, you feel like I've got three minutes.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle:
Right.
Dr. Jessica Burchette:
I really need in this three minutes to give them some good advice. And I usually spend several weeks thinking about it, and may have an epiphany, and it you know, it just kind of just comes up.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle:
Yeah.
Dr. Jessica Burchette:
But other times, it's, it's a big, it's a big responsibility. So.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle:
Every one of the presentations was outstanding, including yours. It was amazing.
Dr. Jessica Burchette:
Thank you so much. Everyone always does such a wonderful job, and I leave inspired.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle:
Every example was different. Every story was different that faculty shared.
Dr. Jessica Burchette:
Yeah, it's great.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle:
Yeah. So my last question is what impact do you hope that you've made on your students?
Dr. Jessica Burchette:
Oh, goodness. That's, that's a big one.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle:
Yeah.
Dr. Jessica Burchette:
I think if I look back on my life and if my students were at my funeral, I would hope the last thing they say about me is that she was a good pharmacist.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle:
Hmm.
Dr. Jessica Burchette:
I would hope that they would say that she cared about me, that she wanted me to succeed, that she encouraged me, that she was a good friend. You know, those are the things, those human qualities that you really hope people carry forward. I hope that they would say, she always treated me with respect.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Jessica Burchette:
So the pharmacy degree is just the avenue that I have to interact with the students.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Jessica Burchette:
But really teaching them and learning about them as people is what's the important part. And I hope that they remember that about me as they graduate and move on into the world and that they're able to pay that forward to future pharmacy students and future patients and colleagues that they're going to interact with.
Dr. Kimberly McCorkle:
Yeah. Thank you, Jessica. I appreciate your commitment to our students and your work in the classroom, in the clinical setting, on the curriculum committee, and throughout your college. It's wonderful to see a member of Gatton's inaugural class come full circle to prepare the next generation of pharmacists. Thanks for listening to "Why I Teach." For more information about Dr. Burchette, the Gatton College of Pharmacy, or this podcast series, visit the ETSU Provost website at ETSU dot edu slash Provost. You can follow me on social media at ETSU Provost, and if you like this episode, please take a moment to like and subscribe to "Why I Teach" wherever you listen to podcasts.