Brittney Chang( left) and Michelle Arroyo( right), members of the M. D. Class of 2029, join Bridge classmate Elliot Bodre in the staging area prior to graduation. Chang and Arroyo are among only a handful of students to graduate from both IMS and Bridge and matriculate into the college’ s M. D. program.
Sean Gabany, who completed his IMS – Clinical Professions degree in 2021 celebrates Match Day 2025 with girlfriend, Katie Allen. Gabany triple-matched for residency in pediatrics, psychiatry and adolescent psychiatry at Cincinnati Children’ s Hospital.
Senior Associate Dean for Interdisciplinary Medical Sciences, Anthony Speights, M. D.
“ There ' s been a lot of focus on ways to impact workforce development,” he added.“ We are still working on ways to continually improve what we ' ve got to make it better for the students; to give them more access and more exposure to make sure that they ' re ready for whatever the next step of their development is … really figure out what is needed and fill those gaps.”
One of those critical needs, in response to a nationwide shortage, is producing more primary care providers— an issue that was relevant when the FSU College of Medicine was founded a quarter-century ago and remains so today.
“ We have to be very careful about who we admit, what kind of training we provide and what kind of support we provide the students that we do admit,” Livingston said.“ We can never lose sight of the service orientation that is necessary to produce the kind of physicians that we state in our mission that we want to produce.
“ That’ s one of the reasons in the IMS program that we put so much emphasis on the clinical and volunteer experiences.”
Speights, who learned under the guidance of Livingston and Hurt, is keenly aware.
“ The only way that we ' re going to get more mission-fit students and people who are going into primary care is actually beat the bushes and find people who are meeting all of those criteria; that have the academics and also have that heart for service that indicates that they ' re more likely to go into primary care,” he said.
Conversely, he doesn’ t want to“ pigeonhole” College of Medicine students who excel.
“ How do I go back to them and say,‘ You need to do family medicine instead of doing orthopedics or doing neurosurgery?’ Can ' t do that,” Speights said.“ The flip side is that those students, even though they ' re going into specialties, also understand where they came from. They understand what the needs are.
“ They may not necessarily be in rural America doing neurosurgery, but they are certainly going to be a whole lot more open to people who are disadvantaged, who are underserved, providing pro bono cases or more charity work than a lot of the folks who have never been exposed to those things. I think we win on either side, because we ' re ending up with many more mission-fit students who are in specialties that historically have not been dominated by mission-fits.”
Through both the curriculum and exposure opportunities, the IMS program is an extension of the college’ s mission to educate and develop exemplary physicians and physician assistants who practice patient-centered health care and are responsive to community needs, especially through service to underserved populations.
With eyes toward the future, and the help of IMS’ in-house advising, the program continues to look at how to train health care professionals— beyond solely physicians and PAs— who can“ affect people ' s lives.”
“ This curriculum allows them a lot of exploration on a lot of different topics and a lot of different pathways … to seek out those alternative paths,” Speights said.
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