as well as our mission of serving the people of Florida with a public-health mandate
to meet their needs. The elderly people, the people in greatest need in the
inner city and the rural countryside, the poor and underserved.
The “intent language” that was added to the bill said the medical school
would produce compassionate physicians. Probably this is the only law creating
a U.S. med school that contains the word “compassionate.” I’m proud to say that
we’re succeeding in producing compassionate physicians.
But the hardest part of the whole enterprise? Not creating the educational
program. Not recruiting students, faculty and staff. Not getting the resources
to build buildings and to recruit faculty and staff, as difficult as all those things
were. In this case it was about a half billion dollars from the Florida Legislature,
not a group known for open arms and open pots of money.
No, the hardest part was the accreditation – because no new M.D. medical
school had been established in this country in about 20 years.
Sandy D’Alemberte was president of Florida State at the time. He defended
this school when we needed him most. He fearlessly took on the accreditors, the
Liaison Committee on Medical Education. He provided the legal representation
that no one else could have. We were depending on him to make sure our first
students could graduate from an accredited medical school. And they did.
A bit of advice: Hire very carefully in the beginning. Those initial hires are
so, so important. Invest in people as though each one is worth a million dollars.
Because, in the final analysis, they probably are.
We dodged a bullet with some of the candidates for the College of Medicine’s
dean. The key to our success has been our community-based clinical training
model – that is, placing students in communities and teaching them about the
various health settings that support people’s health there. Unfortunately, the candidates
for the founding dean’s position either didn’t understand or didn’t fully
appreciate that model.
But it was with our second dean, Ocie Harris, that we began to hit our stride.
He was familiar with community-based training because of his background with
the Area Health Education Centers in Florida. He knew physicians throughout
the state because of that organization, as well as through his role in teaching
pulmonary medicine at the University of Florida College of Medicine. He really
understood how to use physicians to educate students.
We were further lucky in the role that Mollie Hill played in organizing and
establishing our regional campuses. She was familiar with medical society administrators
and physicians all over the state. Because we were planning to hire physicians
from one end of Florida to the other to mentor our students, that familiarity
was crucial. I give Mollie and Ocie full credit for establishing our model,
with the help of our regional campus deans.
Me? I’m often introduced as “the godmother of the College of Medicine.” As
acting dean from August 2000 to July 2001, I was in the perfect place to see all
the pieces come together. Here’s what I brought to the table: I had a passion for
8 | Breaking the Mold