From Experience to Evidence: Advancing Transplant Education at NYMC
The Transplant Education Program Pairs Hands-on Clinical Exposure with Published Evidence of Its Educational Impact
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For one member of the Transplant Education Program (TEP) in the School of Medicine (SOM), the path to transplant medicine began personally. While studying for the MCAT, Lydia Jackson, SOM Class of 2028, learned that her lab partner was on the liver transplant waiting list, facing a wait of months—if not years—for a life-saving procedure. Although Jackson offered to be a living liver donor but was not a match, the experience sparked a lasting interest in transplant medicine and led her to join the TEP, where she now serves as an e-board member.
Launched in 2023 by Samuel Beber, SOM Class of 2026, and Adrianus Ekelmans, SOM Class of 2026, in partnership with the Westchester Medical Center (WMC) Department of Surgery, TEP provides medical students with opportunities to gain hands-on clinical experience, traveling alongside the WMC surgical transplant team to donor hospitals for organ procurements.
“Few medical schools offer students the opportunity to participate in organ procurement, and even fewer provide a structured program that integrates hands-on surgical exposure with longitudinal didactics,” says Beber. “We are proud of the growth of this program and the number of students it has exposed to transplant surgery and medicine.”
There is now documented proof of the positive learning outcomes of the program, with a prospective research study recently published in the Journal of Surgical Education.
“We demonstrated that the TEP significantly and successfully enhanced medical students' knowledge of solid organ transplantation and familiarity with surgical considerations, highlighting the value of such structured educational interventions in transplant medicine,” says Beber. “The inclusion of organ procurement experiences significantly augmented learning outcomes, contributing to a greater understanding of transplant surgical techniques and organ procurement processes, underscoring the importance of immersive, hands-on experiences in medical education.”
The SOM students' own experiences attest to the program’s success.
“Seeing the scale and complexity of the surgery, along with how multiple teams worked seamlessly so that one donor could help several patients, left a lasting impression. Before the case began, there was a quiet moment acknowledging the donor and honoring their life, grounding the technical intensity of the operation in something deeply human,” remarks Courtney Abbriano, SOM Class of 2027, a member of the founding executive board of the TEP. The experience sparked her interest in a surgical career, and she is now applying to urology for residency, a field closely connected to kidney and transplant medicine.
Prior to medical school, Meera Bhargava, SOM Class of 2028, worked in clinical research where she encountered several liver transplant patients. Hearing their stories and seeing the life-saving nature of organ transplantation drew her to get involved in the TEP as a first-year medical student, and she now serves as TEP president.
Earlier this year, Bhargava had the opportunity to go on a liver procurement to Tennessee with an attending, a fellow, and two general surgery residents. “The entirety of this experience was extremely unique, from hearing about the donor, to the moment of silence to honor him prior to the procurement, to the actual surgery where the liver, a kidney, and the heart were procured. I had the opportunity to scrub in and help with ensuring the liver was properly cleaned and preserved for the journey back, along with collecting samples for testing from the patient’s spleen. I left the procurement with a much more thorough understanding of not just the procedural aspects of the surgery but also of the process of listing/allocating organs within the UNOS system,” she says, further solidifying her interest in pursuing a surgical career.
Eleanor Xiao, SOM Class of 2028, journeyed with the WMC transplant team via helicopter for an organ procurement to Staten Island. “TEP was an incredible opportunity to have a unique insight into a transplant surgeon’s work life and just to get into an OR early in medical school, says Xiao. “The resident taught me how to scrub in for the very first time, and I was able to be around the operating table alongside the doctors. The attending was very eager to have me engaged, and walked me through every step he was taking during the operation.”
Looking ahead, Bhargava, Beber, and Ekelmans aim to continue growing the TEP by strengthening connections with surgeons at WMC and expanding opportunities for student involvement—from organ procurements to shadowing and educational programming across the full spectrum of transplant care. As a program that has already deepened student engagement and understanding of solid organ transplantation, the TEP also hopes to collaborate with other New York-area medical schools to extend that momentum beyond New York Medical College.
