MEDICAL SCHOOL ON FSU'S HORIZON
By Dana Peck
Special to the Florida State Times
The supply of doctors may be low in Florida, but Florida State University is ready to meet the growing demand. (While the American Medical Association sees a doctor glut in other states, the situation is the reverse in Florida.)
Two legislators Rep. Durrell Peaden, a Republican from Crestview, and Sen. W. D. Childers, a Republican from Pensacola are asking the Legislature for $1.4 million to expand Florida State's medical training program with a future possibility of a four-year full-fledged medical school.
The medical students who start at Florida State would be recruited heavily from rural areas and trained in hospitals, clinics and teaching programs. They would be encouraged, but not required, to specialize in geriatric care, a serious shortage in Florida.
"It would be a school without walls, a tremendous tax savings," said Peaden, a general practitioner from Crestview.
If legislators OK the spending this year, Florida State will add a second year to its existing one-year medical program.
Medical students currently take science classes at Florida State and do clinical work for three semesters before transferring to get their medical degrees from the University of Florida.
"That program has been most successful, and we believe a second year would make it even stronger," said Florida State President Sandy D'Alemberte. The program has produced more than 600 physicians in its 26-year history, and 64 percent of them are practicing primary-care medicine.
The need for doctors to specialize in geriatric care is tremendous, said Peaden.
The Bureau of Elder Affairs reports that Florida has only 200 physicians trained in geriatric care, and needs 1,400.
The fastest growing age group in Florida, said Peaden, is residents over 100. The state has about 3.5 million residents 60 or older; one million of them are over 80.
Thirty students are enrolled each year in FSU's Program in Medical Sciences or PIMS. The students, who have undergraduate degrees, are first-year medical students.
But unlike first-year students at other universities, they have patient contact throughout the first year. They care for migrant workers and the homeless in summer months, and the rest of the year, they work with physicians in Tallahassee Memorial Regional Medical Center.
At the end of the one-year program, the students transfer to the University of Florida. The state's other medical schools are at the University of Miami, the University of South Florida and Nova Southeastern University, an osteopathic school.
Although Peaden's proposal is asking for a second-year extension to the FSU program, he is aiming for a four-year medical school focusing on geriatric care.
"We're not training them to be dermatologists in Palm Beach," said Peaden.
"We're going to draw those guys from underserved areas and send them back where they came from."
Initial reaction to Peaden's proposal was to delay action and undergo a study to assess the need for a medical school at Florida State. Florida's new Board of Regents Chancellor, Adam Herbert, supported that approach.
But Peaden rejects it.
"We've gotten further along than a study," he said. "By the time they prove there's a need, we'll have a double need."
Peaden has had experience with training programs like the one at FSU.
He began his training in pediatrics and general surgery at the Pensacola Educational Program (similar to FSU's PIMS).
The program, he said, "contributed to restoring physicians to rural areas, and I'm one of them."