
MUSC AT 200: Then, Now, Next
Special | 56m 46sVideo has Closed Captions
MUSC is celebrating its bicentennial in 2024.
The Medical University of South Carolina is celebrating its bicentennial in 2024, and the story of MUSC is a history filled with challenges, determination, expansion, and innovation.
SCETV Specials is a local public television program presented by SCETV
Support for this program is provided by The ETV Endowment of South Carolina.

MUSC AT 200: Then, Now, Next
Special | 56m 46sVideo has Closed Captions
The Medical University of South Carolina is celebrating its bicentennial in 2024, and the story of MUSC is a history filled with challenges, determination, expansion, and innovation.
How to Watch SCETV Specials
SCETV Specials is available to stream on pbs.org and the free PBS App, available on iPhone, Apple TV, Android TV, Android smartphones, Amazon Fire TV, Amazon Fire Tablet, Roku, Samsung Smart TV, and Vizio.
<David J. Cole> We are a comprehensive academic health system.
In fact, the only one in the state of South Carolina.
<Joseph Reves> The College of Medicine, is one of the oldest in the country.
(explosion) <Brooke Fox> There was the period after the ending of the Civil War when the school reopened, and we only had two graduates.
<Biemann Othersen> The medical school was no longer a local institution.
<Cecil Williams> But here was a time in history when African American workers, they were paying the workers half the wages they were paying White workers.
<Robert Layton McCurdy> With Jim Colbert, everybody believed in him.
<Fox> He was the right man at the right time.
<Rose Gibbs> MUSC means the place where I was able to make dreams come true.
<Fox> We are a community of students, a community of educators, and a community of researchers.
<Mark A Scheurer> Healthcare, at the end of the day, is an interaction of people.
<Biemann Othersen> This hospital now is beyond our the wildest dreams.
<Terrence Steyer> I think MUSC is a hidden gem in South Carolina.
<Zoher F. Kapasi> I think we at MUSC should think of what can we do to become exemplary.
<David J. Cole> Innovation is far more than a trendy buzzword.
It's how we lean into the future.
<Jesse Goodwin> We'll become a name that people think of when they think of just places with good ideas.
<Lisa K. Saladin> Everyone shares the passion for making an impact and making a difference.
<Patrick J. Cawley> We've become experts in how to deploy telehealth.
<Marvella E. Ford> Improving health equity was part of the mission statement of MUSC.
<Cole> It changed how others fundamentally viewed us, certainly within the state.
We delivered vaccines and testing in every county in the state.
<Ann Edwards> I believe the reason that you celebrate anything for 200 years is you made a difference.
♪ <Raymond S. Greenberg> 200 years of progress and 200 more to come.
♪ music ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ (birds chirping) ♪ music ♪ <Brooke Fox> The Waring Library is the Special Collections Library for the Medical University of South Carolina.
It consists of the Waring Library itself, which has rare books and manuscript collections on the history of medicine in South Carolina and the South.
The core of the collection is made up of the original Library of the Medical Society of South Carolina.
♪ <Narrator> The Medical Society of South Carolina was established in Charleston in 1789 to help physicians share knowledge and ideas.
By the 1820s, the Medical Society wanted to establish a medical school.
>> The College of Medicine is one of the oldest in the country.
It is the 10th oldest, as a matter of fact, and it's the first in the Deep South.
It was James Moultrie, primarily who petitioned to the legislature that a medical school or College of Medicine be established.
♪ <Fox> So the medical college's, first class started in November 1824.
It consisted of five students.
Medical instruction at the time consisted of two consecutive years.
<Reves> Unfortunately, the state did not appropriate any money.
Seven faculty members were elected by the society and they did it on their own dime.
<Fox> So in order to fund the school, they sold individual tickets to courses.
So students would buy the individual tickets for a particular course.
And when they attended the course, they would hand in the ticket.
And at some point, the faculty member would present the tickets to the Medical Society and they would be paid.
And that was the system for a number of decades.
The first building of the Medical College of South Carolina was erected on Queen Street here in downtown Charleston in 1826, and the city of Charleston provided funding to help build the building ♪ In 1832, the what I refer to as the Great Schism happened.
There was a fissure between the faculty of the Medical College and the Medical Society of South Carolina.
So they ended up resigning and opening their own medical college several blocks from the Queen Street building and opened the Medical College of the State of South Carolina.
<Reves> Two schools we were running, two schools of medicine here in Charleston in competition the original faculty of the original school now were in this new school and that was the one that survived that.
The other one failed.
And...so the one that survived is the one we have today, which was the original, but it was the original faculty in the new school that survived.
<Fox> So in 1839, they re-emerged and formed the Medical College of the State of South Carolina.
They remained that until 1953, when the name was changed back to the Medical College of South Carolina.
♪ <Reves> In 1860, the Medical College of South Carolina was considered one of the finest in the...whole country.
And so it was doing exceedingly well until April of 1861 when the firing on Fort Sumter occurred.
139 of the faculty, students and alumni joined the Confederate Army.
There were two very prominent College of Medicine people in the Confederate Army.
One was Moore.
He was the top medical officer for the whole Confederate Army.
And then there was John Chisholm, who had gone to Europe and witnessed the war and had, in fact, studied it.
And he wrote a manual for military surgery.
The major contribution from my perspective that Chisholm made was he invented an anesthetic inhaler for chloroform.
And this was because of the union blockade and there was no ether or chloroform manufactured in the South.
It was very scarce.
The way it was given around the world at that time was to drop it on a cloth.
And so most of it would evaporate into the air.
He figured out to conserve this very precious medicine that rendered the patients insensitive to pain and to surgery was to have a little matchbox sized thing with two protuberances that went into the nose and they would just breathe that highly concentrated concentration of the anesthetic in the nose.
None of it was spread out into the air.
So his invention and our current interest in innovation go all the way back to at least the Civil War.
<Fox> Most of the original faculty returned from war and started right back where they left off.
So by 1872, enrollment was so low, they graduated two individuals, the school offered free tuition for four years from 1872 to 1876 in order to increase their enrollment numbers.
<Reves> The college was trying to get on its feet after the Civil War and was doing so gradually and then most unfortunately came the 1886 earthquake, which fundamentally destroyed much of the medical school building.
This was again, at a time when there was no money to fix it up.
But fortunately, patrons in Boston, Massachusetts, of all places, raised money so that the medical school building could be renovated and re-established and functioning.
<Narrator> Prior to the earthquake of 1886.
The College of Pharmacy was founded in 1882 and the College of Nursing followed soon after in 1883.
♪ Since its opening in 1824, the medical college student body was made up of strictly men.
But in 1895, most likely due to poor enrollment, women were allowed to attend.
<Fox> We had two women enroll in 1898: Love Rosa Hirschmann Gantt and Emilie Melanie Viett Rundlett, and they graduated in 1901.
♪ <Reves> It's hard for us to imagine today the state of medical education in the late 19th century and the very beginning of the 20th century.
There were over 400 medical schools.
There were countless number of people who called themselves doctors.
They were all, for the most part, being educated in what are called proprietary schools, which means there were few doctors who get together and say, we have a school, and these people would pay them some money and they would give them an M.D.
degree.
So it was basically unregulated and there were far more quacks than there were real doctors.
Narrator> In 1908, the American Medical Association, along with the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, chose Abraham Flexner to conduct a survey of every medical school in the country.
Flexner, an educator in Kentucky, had previously issued an appraisal of American education institutions.
His findings, referred to as the Flexner Report, were published in 1910 and led to major changes and reform in medical education throughout the country.
<Reves> And he, in fact, said 170 of the medical schools that he visited should be wiped off the map, and on that list was ours.
Fortunately, we did have a dean by the name of Robert Wilson who saw that we were on the list to be extinguished, decided something had to be done.
<Narrator> Dean Wilson approached the legislature and Governor Coleman Blease about making the Medical College a state institution in order to have access to state funding to save the college.
<Reves> And Governor Blease although he's different political persuasion really of the people in Charleston agreed and he got the legislature to agree to make the College of Medicine a state institution.
And they, in fact, did give $10,000 ...toward that effort.
And then the city of Charleston got together a major fundraiser.
And in one week, this is back in 1913, they raised $75,000.
Thanks to the city, the people of the city and to some degree, the state for raising the money to allow the new building which still exist on Barry and Calhoun, to be built in 1913 - 14.
♪ <Fox> So Kenneth Lynch joined the faculty of the Medical College in 1913.
And so he was part of the initiative to expand the college.
<Reves> Kenneth Lynch was one of the first, if not the first full time faculty recruited here to the Medical College.
He was a pathologist.
Some of his earliest work led to the association of asbestos with cancer.
<Fox> He succeeded Robert Wilson as dean in 1943, and he held that position until his retirement in 1960.
Kenneth Lynch wanted to not only physically expand the institution, with new buildings and more faculty and students, but also expand further into basic science research.
<Reves> He was dedicated to improving this college of medicine, and the main element in that plan was to have our own university hospital.
Up until that time, the hospital for the clinical training, it was Roper, right across the street.
Lynch... thought it was important to have, as did all the better schools at that time have their own university hospital.
The hospital was built in 1955 and that was the turning point.
This was the beginning of the separation between Roper and the Medical College of South Carolina.
And appointments, clinical appointments and basic sciences were all within the university.
All the faculty, all the doctors for the most part, became full time Medical College of South Carolina and no longer Roper doctors, and that was a big change.
<Fox> Hazel Alston was one of the first African-American LPNs, so licensed, practical nurses, to be hired by the Medical College Hospital.
So she was on site when the hospital admitted its first patient in September 1955.
>> I was happy to admitting him, meeting him at the elevator.
It was nice to meet him.
Took him to his room.
He was a nice man.
Yep.
And he had surgery the next day and he went home.
That was, you know, just a place on his forehead.
And they said it was cancer.
And he took it off We know all the doctors at that time.
Everybody know everybody.
And, we just was one big family.
You know, I worked at Medical for 37 years.
I enjoyed my job.
Not growing up thinking that I was going to be a nurse.
But you never know what's in store in life for you.
♪ Good things.
And that was the one good thing that I went into, nursing.
♪ <Narrator> Lynch wanted to not only physically expand the institution with new buildings, more faculty and students, but also further expand into basic science research.
Lynch's leadership and expansion programs set the foundation for what MUSC has become.
During Lynch's tenure, the College of Graduate Studies was founded in 1949 and would set the stage for further growth.
In 1964, the College of Dental Medicine was founded under President Harold Rawling Pratt-Thomas and the College of Health Professions in 1969 under President William McCord.
>> And it was the Medical College of South Carolina until 1969 when we became a university.
So we became the Medical University of South Carolina.
>> They changed from the Medical College of South Carolina to the Medical University.
It was a name change, but it was more than that.
It was the fact that the medical school was no longer a local institution.
It was now a nationwide university.
And more and more people would be added to it.
And I happened to be coming along at a time when it was making that transition.
<Fox> I would say that the next significant time period after the expansion program and the opening of the 1955 hospital would be when James Colbert was hired to become the vice president.
He came in 1969, and then the hospital worker strike started.
♪ <Cecil J. Williams> The Charleston Hospital worker strike was one of those events happening near the end of the civil rights movement, period.
I was requested by Jet to photograph this event, but here was a time in history when African-American workers were working for the hospitals in and around Charleston, South Carolina.
They were paying the workers half the wages they were paying White workers.
And of course, this being so unfair, it attracted national attention.
And I was part of the Corps of Journalists covering that event at this time.
But one of the most memorable one was that when Mrs. King also appeared in Charleston to march with the workers, being that this was a period of time right after the death of Martin Luther King was assassinated, tensions were very high.
People were, of course, very jumpy.
I remember one photograph when we were marching, Mrs. King, of course, was surrounded by police authorities, law enforcement and, of course, SLED, but an automobile misfired.
And I photographed Mrs. King and others reacting to it by, you know, jumping from that backfire and also looking behind them.
And one of my pictures reflects that moment in time.
♪ Of course, now we are more than 50 years past the time of the Charleston hospital workers strike during the period and over those years and those decades have gone by there have been many times when the Medical University has had anniversaries and other celebrations.
Around 20 years ago, The Palmetto Portrait sponsored a contest, and I submitted a photograph of the Charleston hospital worker strike and some of the things I had taken and they were exhibited.
Much to my delight, has been seen by many people.
And sometimes when I'm in the area, I go by to take a look at them as well.
So it's something that, you know, you enjoy looking back and reflecting it.
That moment in that time when people were being abused by the system at the outcome, of course, everyone was very encouraged by them achieving what they started out trying to do, and that was to get ♪ a fair wage for the work that they were doing.
<Fox> James Colbert was one of the, in my opinion, first real significant outsiders to come in and him having been born in New York City and educated in the north, and he also worked at the National Institutes of Health for a period of time.
So he provided a new perspective and brought new energy to the institution.
And during his brief period here that we had our first African-American graduate.
♪ During Dr. Colbert's five years here, he kind of laid an additional groundwork for the institution moving beyond South Carolina.
>> With Jim Colbert, everybody believed in him.
Do you know what I mean?
Nobody thought he was scheming about anything.
He was a wonderful leader.
He could help people see what needed to be done and then help them figure out how they could do it.
<Fox> So, Dr. Colbert, he played a major role in developing the Medical University's family practice program.
<Steyer> MUSC has the third oldest family medicine department in the country founded in 1970 and it was known as being sort of, for lack of a better word, the grandfather of a lot of different family medicine programs here in the country.
Many departments can trace their roots of establishing family medicine at their medical school back to faculty members from MUSC who were trained here and then moved on to become leaders in the family medicine specialty across the country.
Family medicine is the medical specialty that cares for people of all ages, all genders across the entire lifespan.
Many people joke cradle to grave.
In reality, it's actually we do everything, including prenatal care, delivery of babies, care of children, adults, geriatrics, and are able to take care of the majority of an individual's health care problems.
<Fox> It was basically understood that James Colbert would be the next president after Dr. McCord, who was president from 1965 to 1975, but he was tragically killed in an airplane accident in 1974, along with two of his sons.
So that was a significant blow to the Medical University's trajectory towards growth.
There was something about him that he was the right man at the right time.
And unfortunately, his death really hit the university hard.
♪ <Rose Gibbs M.D.> We had the graduation on the horseshoe, and when I looked up, there were... African-American nurses, LPNs, orderlies, ward clerks, on different levels of the hospital.
And I could see them looking out of the window, looking down at me, and I am walking towards them.
♪ I don't recall if I said hello, you know, but I saw them and I was just so happy and so pleased because I saw them as my support and I saw them as we were, we were in solidarity with each other.
This is it.
And I walked down and I think no one else's name was called until I exited down and went back to my seat.
...Yeah.
To me,...MUSC means the place where I was able to make dreams come true.
♪ >> Jim Edwards was a one of a kind.
There's no question about that.
He was not a traditional academic in any sense of the word.
He'd never worked in academics before he came into the presidency.
He was a dentist by training.
But probably more importantly, he was a politician.
He was the former governor of the state and was a member of the Reagan administration Cabinet as a secretary of the Department of Energy.
>> He was offered the opportunity to be the president of the Medical University of South Carolina.
He came in and he had a vision for greatness.
President Edwards did this by ...inspiration, by recruitment.
And it takes a great faculty to make a great school.
That's...the secret.
<Greenberg> That was, I think, probably a turning point in the history of the institution, but equally important, maybe even more important than all of that is what John Edwards was like as a human being, which probably made him such a successful politician.
He related to everybody on that campus and in the community equally, whether it was the highest donor to the institution or a person who had no health insurance who was coming for care.
John Edwards treated everybody equally.
It was remarkable to me.
I'd never seen a university president who had that kind of common man approach.
As much as he had accomplished personally in his life, he approached everything with great humility.
So I hope that some of that rubbed off on me in the five years that I worked with Jim.
He was a truly inspirational leader.
<Ann Edwards> I think that Jim was inclusive of people.
He would have the governor speak at a graduation and say, "Let me show you what good is happening here" and how and it really moves the institution into another place.
>> I just can't say enough about Dr. Jim Edwards and his leadership when he came back to Charleston to take over the Medical University.
We were in the process of getting the Children's Hospital built and Jim was a... fantastic president, and he was unrelenting in helping me get that Children's Hospital.
<Edwards> The thing that he really was pleased about was the dental school.
It was so exciting to have the... breaking of ground for the dental school.
>> I feel so fortunate that we have a state of the art facility at the James B Edwards College of Medicine here on 29 B Street.
♪ I think that when people tour this building, when they look at our instrument sterilization area, it really is state of the art.
I think the hallmark of this building is all the digital dentistry equipment and the innovation that's there.
So you walk around the floors of this building and see patients are being scanned, their mouths they're doing crowning a day.
I think the thing that makes CDM so unique is the people, the faculty, staff, students and our patients who we serve.
Whenever I enter the James B. Edwards College of Medicine, I see his name printed on the building out there and it really is very inspiring.
Dr. Edwards was there when this building was formed, and he always will be.
His memory not only through MUSC, but through the state, through the governor's office, through, you know, national service will live on forever.
So it's a really inspiring story.
>> Dr. Ray Greenberg took over in 2000.
He had been provost.
He was, you know, a brilliant man and very focused on research and the education at MUSC, as well as the patient care and that tripartite mission.
He was about trying to replace facilities, build new facilities.
>> Being part of building something is was far more exciting than being in the situation of maintaining something.
So part of the attraction to come to the Medical University was that I saw an opportunity to build there.
There were there was a strong foundation, but one really could take that to a whole another level.
And it really involved recruiting the right people into various leadership positions.
And so it would be nice to take credit for what happened during the nearly 14 years of my presidency, but realistically, it was the combined efforts of literally dozens and dozens of people who we brought to the institution and who helped build the success that we experienced.
♪ <McCurdy> 2000.
So that was the year.
More or less the year I became dean.
We were successful because we recruited some people who did research.
So the department became research oriented.
We were the most well, researched funded department in the school dollar wise.
I felt like it was successful and the department has continued to climb.
♪ <Cole> I think it's important, especially when you're looking through the public's eye, to define who we are, who we're not.
You know, we are not a community health system and community health systems are important.
You know, they provide excellent health care for our community and do many things that are positive for the fabric of who we are.
But we're not a community health system.
You know, we are a comprehensive academic health system.
In fact, the only one in the state of South Carolina comprehensive meaning that all dimensions of our missions, we have the full capability of delivering on.
And what are those missions?
It's not merely about providing outstanding health care.
It's about educating the future.
It's about changing the future.
Why do we partner?
Why do we come to communities?
Why when we go into, you know, local communities, do people in general, say, "Hey, we're glad you're here"?
Because they know that we can bring assets and resources that go beyond, if you will, community health systems, per se.
So in my opinion, our role is actually help support communities and community health systems not to compete with them.
>> When you combine research and education and clinical care, why it develops into a special place.
That's what's called an academic health system.
There's over 6000 hospitals in the country and there's only a few hundred that are what we would call traditional academic health systems.
And we're one of those.
>> I believe that we can be the preeminent model for integrated health care, meaning that, you know, whether you be dentistry or medicine or health professions or nursing, we have everything under the MUSC umbrella.
>> I have to say that I am so impressed with how well students work together on this campus.
When I first came here, we didn't do that.
No, you were trained in this building and you went to this hospital and that's no longer the case.
We are a community of students, a community of educators, and a community of researchers.
♪ <Gerard Silvestri> I have so many memories of the Cancer Center, but I'm actually old enough to have spent time with Ernest Hollings, who is the namesake of the Cancer Center and some of the most really interesting times for me were talking to him about how you would develop a cancer center, how you would get funding for a cancer center.
And so it was really working with Senator Hollings to get that done, which was one of the more remarkable memories for me.
<Judith Green> My late husband, Dr. Mark Green, served as the second Hollings Cancer Center director.
Mark's recruitment to MUSC included many conversations with our late U.S.
Senator Fritz Hollings, who shared his dream with us.
He envisioned our center achieving National Cancer Institute designation and bringing state of the art cancer treatment to South Carolina.
♪ >> Hollings is the only NCI designated cancer center in the state of South Carolina, and that's a bit important to the legislature, to, you know, a lot of folks that support cancer research in general, community leaders.
It's a benefit to the state in terms of the quality and depth of cancer care.
It's also a benefit to the citizens in the rural areas because we have a very extensive community outreach and engagement program.
We do a lot of cancer screening.
Their chances of surviving cancer are lower and we want to try to equalize that.
So that they have the same chance of survival as anyone of us who would get care with insurance coverage.
>> We also understand that there are barriers like fear and mistrust, and so that's why we try to have such a strong presence in communities across the state.
We understand that we need to go where people are.
One example is our SC Amen program, which is our cancer screening program for Black men.
We provide a one hour prostate cancer educational module.
We use plain language and we talk about what prostate cancer is.
Some of the risk factors age, race, family history.
We also talk about the fact that in South Carolina, Black men, the prostate cancer death rates are two and a half times higher for Black men than for White men.
That is an alarming statistic.
And that's why we have the SC Amen program.
♪ <Cawley> We started looking at what we call the 30 year hospital replacement project.
A decision was made that the university hospital, which is directly attached to the what is now the old children's hospital, they were directly connected to each other.
If MUSC was going to deliver cutting edge care, we were going to have to be in a new facility, and it was basically a 30 year hospital replacement project.
It would be built in three phases.
Phase Two is actually the Shawn Jenkins Children's Hospital, which opened up in 2020.
>> One of the guiding goals of how we wanted to create the building I see play out, which I think will be beyond our time here, is it invites people to feel calm, right!
There's a lot of light in the building.
We are very intentional about that.
We create green spaces.
It should be about fostering a sense of calm, warmth, belonging and human interaction.
Health care at the end of the day is an interaction of people.
And that's what this building and that's what MUSC Children's Health and our women's health platform are about.
>> This hospital now is just beyond our wildest dreams we ever had for anything like a new hospital.
Received a letter from the Board of Trustees saying that they have decided to name the operating suite in my honor.
And I was very touched by that.
(siren) <Steyer> I think MUSC is a hidden gem in South Carolina.
I think a lot of people don't understand the status and reputation we have, not only here in the state of South Carolina, but across our country.
Children from across the country and world are coming to our institution to get the care they need from the faculty who we have.
♪ >> To have a good pediatric program and to recruit good specialists, you want doctors who are interested in research ♪ and interested in new knowledge.
♪ >> Research is kind of a mechanism for making discoveries that will impact clinical practice down the road.
So we like to say that physicians go into medicine to help people, but scientists can cure humanity.
So we don't touch patients but the discoveries made today can lead to, you know, either diagnostics or therapeutics, or treatments for thousands of people,.
if not, millions of people.
>> Basic science research is fundamental research.
It has scientists trying to understand the most fundamental mechanisms by how cells work and how those are changed by disease.
So a fundamental basic science research is really driven by discovery and trying to make discoveries that will eventually have.
Big impact on patients.
That's considered translational research where scientists take those most fundamental mechanisms and translate those to the treatment of patients and disease.
So here at MUSC, we're conducting research at all levels of discovery.
♪ >> One of the strengths of the Medical University of South Carolina is that we realize healthcare is a team sport.
So you will find on many of your teams, physicians, pharmacists, nurses, interprofessionalism is very important in health care.
This all begins in your training and that is one of the pillars of the Medical University of South Carolina is training all the health care professions together.
♪ <Lisa K. Saladin> We've had educational innovators here on campus since I arrived.
People looking to do different things to engage students, to help them learn differently, and to just be more effective at educating students.
♪ This building has a rich history, and it was the - not only the training, educational building, but it was the dormitory for nurses.
This building had just for, you know, and it served its purpose, but it had just aged to the point where it needed major work.
And I tried to design the renovation to bring the history back to the college.
We really had an eye to preserving the past while looking forward to the future.
And so we had this beautiful conference room that we're in now.
It's actually the historic library we call it.
I tried to create as many cabinets as we could as you got off the elevator, so we could display some of our history.
The photographs that are amazing.
Some of my favorites are the uniforms that we had.
And so instead of having landscapes of Charleston or pictures of the Ravenel Bridge or something, I said, No, what we're going to have is our history where you can actually track things over time.
♪ >> If there is any legacy that I may or may not have in this role, I would hope that one of the legacies are that MUSC has a culture of innovation.
I've always intentionally put patients at the center of everything we do.
And in addition to that, innovation is how we change for their lives.
Those two are critical.
So what's a culture of innovation?
You just taste it, see it, feel it, breathe it.
When you are part of us, you know it.
And people seek us out because that's who we are.
Innovation at MUSC is one of our key values.
It's what propels us forward.
And so the ability for our researchers to to do work that can then become patentable and be used other places is essential.
It's part of what makes us a university in a medical university.
>> Dr. Cole tasked Dr. Cawley and I with looking at where we are with all aspects of innovation across campus, to bring them together and to form an Office of Innovation, to write a job description for a chief innovation officer and to hire Dr. Jesse Goodwin as our chief innovation officer.
That has changed a culture of innovation here at MUSC.
It has stimulated innovation at MUSC and it is why we are on the map for innovation at MUSC.
♪ >> I'm charged with creating a culture of innovation at MUSC that is internationally recognized.
That is the goal.
The aspirational target is that we'll become a name that people think of when they think of just places with good ideas.
>> Research shows time and time again, when you have a diverse workforce, your bottom line financially goes up, because you have a broader scope of lens, greater chance for innovation because you've got a diversity of voice.
There's going to be return on investment.
There's going to be more opportunity for innovation.
Through innovation of thought that comes with diversity.
Then, and there's going to be a bigger opportunity to have a more engaged, retained workforce because they're going to be individuals who find commonality and connection, because now we're more diverse and they're going to want to stay.
♪ <Saladin> Everyone shares the passion for making an impact and making a difference.
Whether it's making an impact as an educator or making an impact as a researcher, or making an impact as a clinician.
That's the passion people have here, and that's what I love.
♪ <Cole> We're not the Medical University of Charleston.
We're the Medical University of South Carolina.
And in many ways, it's about time that we stepped into that role and started acting in manner that made a bigger impact and different for the state and for our citizens.
The best care is local, best care is local.
We understand that.
We support it.
We elevate it.
That hospital and those communities now have the confidence about a higher level of care in their own community, better business, patient centric, better outcomes because we are supporting best local care.
>> Typically, people have excellence as a value, and excellence is a good value to have.
But sometimes I tell my faculty and staff honestly who comes in them wanting to do a shoddy job.
So to me, excellence is given.
I think we at MUSC should think of what can we do to become exemplary, to set an example for the rest of the nation on how things ought to be.
<Cawley> Telehealth is something that we started to do around 2013, and that has grown and we've developed it.
And so we become experts in how to deploy telehealth.
We've also become experts in deploying into rural and underserved areas.
<Ford> Improving health equity was part of the mission statement of MUSC, and I was so impressed by this commitment at the highest level of leadership.
<Anita Ramsettv> CARES stands for Community Aid, Relief, Education and Support.
Care sees uninsured patients, and traditionally they've all been adult patients.
Over the last two years, you started seeing under insured kids.
CARES is actually run by an interdisciplinary group of students.
We have two missions.
One is to serve the underserved.
That's the primary mission.
The second is education.
The students need to learn how to actually do this well, and we take that very seriously.
<Michael de Arellano> My work at the National Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center really covers the gamut of clinical work research, and I'm training on helping folks to understand how to address the needs of individuals who have experienced traumatic events like physical abuse, sexual abuse, domestic violence or other types of crimes, and are having trauma related problems like post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety.
You can have the best treatment intervention around, but if individuals can't access it, it's...not great.
Right!?
We want to make sure that everyone can have access to the best quality treatments, and we do that via telehealth.
Can we provide that same quality of service for children who have experienced trauma but do it virtually?
And the answer is yes.
♪ <Cawley> COVID wasn't the first emerging infectious disease that I've dealt with in my career here at MUSC.
We've been on the cutting edge of many, many others in the last 20 years, but nothing became massive like COVID.
<Cole> There was so many unknowns.
You know, mortalities were worrisome.
When we were reportedly getting tests from the federal government for COVID tests.
And I don't remember the exact number, but it was some ridiculously low number that MUSC was getting allocated on a weekly basis.
Like, okay, Houston, we've got a problem here, you know, because this wasn't an MUSC only problem.
We as a nation were caught flat footed.
<Cawley> That summer, we also were one of the first to deal with having our own test.
So we developed our own COVID diagnostics test.
You know, we were one of the first to actually develop an outside testing.
There's a lot of other health systems that like to claim that, but we know that we were one of the first in the nation to actually have a outside testing area, drive-thru, which we set up in West Ashley, part of Charleston.
>> The idea behind a drive-thru actually came from a chicken sandwich because we were talking about how hungry we were at the time and how we wanted to move people efficiently.
It was like, I mean, fast food places do it efficiently and they do it a great job.
So that's maybe how we should do our drive-thru.
That's what we're going to do is a drive-thru style.
But then we started thinking about how do you test groups of people at the time safely, but have them not waiting in lines for periods of time?
So one of the ideas we came up with was the pit stop.
(car engines revving) It doesn't matter how fast you're going and if somebody else in front of you is taking longer, that's okay because you can drive in, get your test, and then leave and that person could be still sitting in front of you.
So we made a six lane drive-thru that people can come and get tested.
<Cawley> It was a long haul.
It was a lot of different things we had to deal with.
There were surges that came at multiple times, We had to deal with vaccinations eventually.
You know, I'm glad we're on the other side of that now.
And those were some some rough years with a lot of, lot of, lot of hard work and long hours.
But, you know, I can assure you that if that happened again today, MUSC is going to step up.
That's who we are.
That's...the kind of institution we are.
That's the leadership of this institution.
And, you know, we're going to be here.
<Cole> It changed how others fundamentally viewed us, certainly within the state.
We delivered vaccines, testing in every county in the state of South Carolina, every county.
I think it transformed how we viewed ourselves.
♪ >> The state is actually going to have an innovation month, which MUSC's Annual Innovation Week, will anchor the month of April.
And so every year for the last five years, we've taken a whole week and dedicated it to celebrating innovations of all type.
And this includes a lot of reward programs.
There are a lot of sessions where we can teach people about the latest and greatest topics, and then we have some featured programs where people get to come and pitch their ideas and participate in a shark tank with an actual shark and be in front of a panel of judges and potentially win some prizes, and really, the goal is not the prize in and of itself, but to really foster a culture of innovation at the organization and I'm really exceptionally proud of the fact that MUSC and the way that it has done this has grown in reputation across the state such that now we get to be an anchor and a founding member of the South Carolina's first Innovation Month, which is pretty exciting for the organization and something that I'm really proud of.
<David J. Cole> Innovation is far more than a trendy buzzword, certainly in the business community or maybe even a simple, simplistic explanation of something that's new or different.
It's how we lean into the future.
Innovation is how we lean into the future.
♪ >> 200 years in Charleston on this campus is incredible.
And it also reflects how far we've come, our ability to adapt, our ability to grow, ♪ our ability to innovate and create in new ways that benefit the people of not only Charleston and not only South Carolina, but actually all around the country.
That's something MUSC should be immensely proud of.
I know.
I'm proud of it.
♪ <Ann Edwards> I believe the reason that you celebrate anything for 200 years is you made a difference.
And has made a set of standards that has been high and so we can celebrate 200 years.
I applaud the progress that they've made.
♪ >> So I don't know why it's been here for 200 years, but I don't think things are random.
I think we're here because our state needs us.
I think we're here because we have an obligation to care for people, to find innovations, to look forward and to be here for them.
And I don't see that changing in the next 200 years.
>> I would say the Medical University was conceived by visionaries.
It was the first medical school in the south.
They were starting something brand new in 1824.
The institution is still at heart trying to be an innovator, and in that sense, maybe better than what exists today.
<Greenberg> 200 years of progress and 200 more to come.
♪ You know, 200 years of anything.
>> And continuity is very unique, you know, and I think that our our history has been.
It's interesting.
I keep going back to innovation and so forth.
If you look at the founding of the Medical College of South Carolina in 1824, they were considered the innovators in their time.
So it's awesome that through the thread of history, 200 years, which parallels an entire nation, we've been present and accounted for every step along the way.
Where we stand right now, we have more potential, more opportunity to make even further impact that any point in the last 200 years.
♪ >> MUSC is the place to be.
This is where people want to be.
They're choosing to come here and choosing to stay and I think we're seeing the benefits.
And we hope that all of the giants on whose shoulders we stand as we celebrate our 200th year, I hope wherever they are, they can,...see the great success that we're continuing to build on the foundation that they laid.
And I hope they - that brings a smile to their faces wherever they are.
♪ <Cole> There's just honestly a lot of work that needs to be done.
Again, this is not about MUSC only.
We realize that we have can be a catalyst.
We can be a presence, we can be a support.
And it requires all of us to do something that's meaningful or make a difference in terms of our community and community health.
♪ ♪
SCETV Specials is a local public television program presented by SCETV
Support for this program is provided by The ETV Endowment of South Carolina.