students, and how little time they had to train the medical students anyway.
Residents are not the best teachers of students. And residents probably would
admit it to you, if you asked them.]
We came along at a time when the AAMC and others were saying there were
too many medical schools. The country was saying there were too many doctors.
They were looking at how to reduce the number of doctors being trained. So
when we came on board with a new school, they really didn’t have an appetite for
hearing about it in the first place, and they surely didn’t want to hear about one
that’s going to be different.
Judging by some of their questions and even some of the comments that
came back in their letters, it was almost like they thought it was a joke. Like,
“How dare you?” I really think that they didn’t think we were going to succeed.
But we really were on a mission.
By the time we got to the first reaccreditation that we did back in 2011,
interestingly enough, more of the country had come on board with at least some
of what we were attempting to do. So more schools were looking to do an integrated
curriculum in the first two years, and a few more of them had looked at
the concept of regional campuses for clinical training.
I do think that we did something special. We came up with a model of medical
education that works. It works for Florida State, it works for the state of
Florida and it can work for the country. It’s unfortunate that more of the newer
schools didn’t pick up on it.
I think going forward we will continue to have a successful model. And I’m
hoping that we’ll be able to grow more of our GME programs in a similar mode
as well. •
46 | Breaking the Mold