Pensacola Regional Campus Dean Paul McLeod with students and Durell
Peaden in 2003. (College of Medicine photo archive)
UNIQUE CLINICAL TRAINING: THE AUSTRALIAN MODEL
Written with assistance from Mollie Hill and Ocie Harris
What do we mean when we say that our college has “a distributed model
of medical education”? We mean that we teach our students clinical
skills out in the community, at locations around the state, distributing
them among clinical practices in rural areas, in urban areas, where elderly
people live, where minority people live and where other underserved people live.
It’s one part of our medical school that the Liaison Committee on Medical
Education, the accrediting organization for U.S. medical schools, apparently
never did understand.
We didn’t invent this model, but I like to think we perfected it.
The LCME thought it was radical because we weren’t building a medical center
like all the other medical schools in the United States. Fact is, the money
28 | Breaking the Mold