One Burrell medical student has been awarded a $10,000 scholarship from the Tucson Osteopathic Medical Foundation (TOMF). Bradley Poindexter, OMS-III, was unanimously chosen for this award by the TOMF Grants, Scholarships, and Awards Committee. TOMF is a long-standing non-profit organization founded to support the enhancement of medical education through various financial support.
Founded in 1986, the Tucson Osteopathic Medical Foundation houses an endowment of over $9 million dollars, utilized to provide programming and charitable services to Southern Arizona. The award to Poindexter falls under their Founder’s Scholarships program. These awards are issued annually to osteopathic medical students at the Burrell College of Osteopathic Medicine. These awards are given in the name of the Tucson General Hospital Founders. The Founder’s Awards were originally established in 1987 and over time they have.
Bradley grew up in a rural farming community in Southern Arizona, in a town of about 2,800. “A career in medicine was always in my mind because my mother was a nurse and I always admired the work that she did,” says Bradley. “Because of my interest in technology, I ended up in an IT position at our local hospital where I trained and supported physicians while implementing a new electronic health record system. It was my conversations with these physicians and seeing how focused they were on positive patient outcomes that ultimately led to my return to college so I could prepare myself for applying to med school.” In addition to being a full-time medical student, Bradley is also a husband and father to two children.
Bradley chose to attend Burrell College because of its mission to advance healthcare access to medically underserved communities in the rural Southwest. Throughout his time as a student, he has completed clinical rotations in Las Cruces, Silver City, and Lordsburg, New Mexico, where he has been able to interact with a wide variety of patients from all different backgrounds. “Burrell is fortunate to have so many students, staff, and faculty who tirelessly give back to our community, and witnessing their dedication and selflessness has inspired me,” says Bradley. “I am grateful for that example.”
Bradley’s current top choice for residency training after graduating is to pursue internal medicine, followed thereafter by an oncology fellowship. “Of the reasons why I am most interested in oncology, the biggest is the unique patient-physician relationship that exists when confronting a life-altering diagnosis and coming together to discuss goals and options for treatment,” explains Bradley. After completion of residency training, Bradley hopes to practice in a medically underserved region and to pay it forward by being a part of medical education wherever he settles.
Bradley is honored to have been selected for the TOMF scholarship award. “I am grateful to be the recipient of this award that will help lower my medical debt burden, but what makes this award even more important to me is that it is provided by osteopathic physicians in southern AZ, a group that I hope to be a part of in the near future,” says Bradley. He would like to extend his thanks to his fellow classmates for inspiring him to be a better medical student, to the faculty and staff at Burrell College for working tirelessly to provide quality education, and to his wife for always keeping him going.
