Halifax Health CEO Jeff Feasel first met Viel, Gershen and Daly when they were FSU medical students doing clinical rotations at the hospital. Now they are Halifax
Health physicians.
“It reminds you
of the doctor that
you set out to be.
Teaching was a
big selling point
when I considered
coming back.”
also knew we wanted to work for Luckey Dunn at some point. I think
maybe, from some standpoint, we thought we owed him and Florida State.”
Gershen agreed: “Everyone at the campus made it feel like family. Dr.
Dunn was definitely a big influence. I don’t know how many people still
get emails every year on their birthday. I don’t know anyone from another
medical school who still talks to their dean six years out of medical school.”
Jeff Feasel, CEO of Halifax Health, said the College of Medicine’s
Daytona Beach campus has far exceeded his expectations. He remembers
when FSU proposed the campus. His medical staff jumped at the opportunity,
he said, and he lobbied hard for Dunn to be named the founding dean: “We
knew from his soccer-coaching days and his training, his military background,
his family roots here in the community, that he would have the buy-in from
the rest of the medical staff and the community.”
Feasel can’t say enough about FSU’s students, about community leaders
such as Kent Sharples from Daytona State College (where the College of
Medicine’s regional campus is), and about his own doctors. Dunn can’t say
enough about his community partners – especially Halifax, where FSU
students complete 70 to 80 percent of their clinical rotations. Both men,
like the other campus deans, praise the community physicians on their
faculty as the backbone of the College of Medicine. As Feasel puts it: “It
- Stephen Viel (M.D., ’09)
takes good doctors to train good doctors.”
“It’s almost as good as having a residency program here,” he said. “We
get to know the third- and fourth-year students, get to look them over
and say, ‘Would you consider coming back to the community when you
complete your residency?’”
More and more, the answer is “Yes.”
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