Myra Hurt celebrates a PIMS student’s graduation from the University of
Florida medical school. (College of Medicine photo archive)
PIMS: THE COLLEGE OF MEDICINE’S FOUNDATION
Long before there was a medical school at Florida State University, there
was PIMS (rhymes with “rims” – don’t spell out “P-I-M-S”). The Program
in Medical Sciences was a cooperative effort between the University of
Florida College of Medicine and FSU. It began as a first-year program for medical
students, but it came to be the foundation of the College of Medicine. I was
the fourth and final director of PIMS, and its history is intertwined with my
own.
PIMS was part of the expansion of medical programs nationwide funded by
the National Institutes of Health in the 1960s, when people suddenly realized
that the number of doctors in the United States was not keeping up with the
growth of the population. The people at UF, as always, wanted to take advantage
of an opportunity to get NIH money. They recognized they didn’t have enough
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