FEATURES / SEPTEMBER 1999

NEW MEDICAL SCHOOL
A POSSIBILITY FOR FSU

By Dana Peck Special to the Florida State Times

Florida State University is studying the possibility of a first-of-its-kind medical school for North Florida: If approved by the Legislature next spring, FSU will expand its one-year Program in Medical Sciences (PIMS) to a four-year medical school. Only Florida students would be enrolled - with the goal that, after graduating, they would stay home, care for their neighbors and pay special attention to the aging population.

Advocates of the FSU medical school say the state graduates fewer doctors than it needs - nine out of 10 of Florida's M.D.s come from somewhere else - and the need can only grow greater as baby boomers age and retire to Florida.

"I think it's inevitable that there will be another medical school in this state," said Dr. Myra Hurt, the director of FSU's one-year medical program. "We would like to do something very different here."

What would be different in Tallahassee is a medical school that recruits non-traditional students, often older than most med students, from varied backgrounds and with a record of helping others. "We want a diverse medical class," Hurt said, "not just in ethnic background, but in life experiences."

The theory is that if medical students have been selected, in part, because they are deeply motivated to care for the sick, they will be more likely to treat families rather than train for more lucrative jobs in medical centers as specialists.

"Because they are different when they come in, they will undoubtedly be different when they graduate," Hurt said. "Looking at the 21st century, we need our physicians to be the first of a new breed trained to be the best primary care physicians in the world." For 30 years, FSU has taught first-year medical students, emphasizing hands-on clinical work with patients.

Each class of 30 has a large share of older students who decide to leave their jobs and become doctors. They often are married; many have grown up without middle-class American comforts. Most go on to finish their education at UF and return to their homes to practice. They're not all "your 21-year-old white kids from the suburbs," said Dr. Frank Walker, a Tallahassee pediatrician and former PIMS student.

For example, another former PIMS student is the child of a migrant farmworker. A current student, a woman enrolled this year, was a U. S. Navy pilot with 100 carrier landings and a record of flying support assignments in the Middle East.

About 60 percent of PIMS students practice in Florida (compared to about 35 percent of four-year graduates from the University of Florida and University of South Florida medical schools). Furthermore, about 50 percent of the PIMS graduates are primary care physicians, (25 percent nationally).

Walker came to FSU as an undergraduate with his heart set on a medical degree from UF. PIMS was the gateway to his goal, and in 1971 he became a member of the first full class of PIMS students to graduate.

As a PIMS student, Walker received concentrated, clinical, hands-on training in addition to technical class work. He says his PIMS education was rewarding in many ways; chief among them was being inspired to become a pediatrician like Dr. Raney Oven, the clinician he worked with. He also had more experience than other medical-school students in working directly with patients.

"I had a leg up as far as knowing how to deal with patients," Walker said. Today Walker is on the board that selects PIMS students. "I can influence to some extent the kind of people who are going into medicine," he said. "I need people who want to work, do this for a long time, and see a reasonable number of patients. "In Florida, there's no shortage of patients. For example, 11 counties surrounding Leon County have been deemed by the federal government as medically underserved.

Each year Florida's three medical schools graduate about 400 students to care for 14 million residents. By comparison, New York, with a population close to Florida's, has 12 medical schools and graduates more than 1,900 M.D.s annually. Two plans are due to the Legislature in November: An FSU plan to expand PIMS to two years and an FSU plan to establish a four-year medical school. Meanwhile, the Legislature has earmarked more than $23 million to strengthen FSU's medical science programs.

Skeptics have suggested that Tallahassee's population can't support a faculty for a medical school. But records show that 25 of the nation's 125 medical schools are in smaller cities. "Faculty will not be a problem," Hurt said. "Potential clinical training sites include local physicians' offices and hospitals in Florida communities including Tallahassee, Pensacola, Orlando and Jacksonville."

For more information about PIMS, log on to its Web site at http://www.fsu.edu/~pims/pims.html

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