• As the lone founding regional campus dean still in place, he has worked alongside 15 different regional campus deans, nine alone between Orlando and Tallahassee, which came online with Pensacola in 2003 as the original clinical training sites.
“ There are other things in my professional journey, and in my faith journey, that I think I want to do when I still can, including doing more to take care of underserved patients in Pensacola at a clinic I’ ve worked at since it started 23 years ago,” McLeod said.“ I just feel like I need to be doing a little more there.”
At Health & Hope Clinic, McLeod has treated the uninsured and medically underserved of Escambia County since 2003, at times alongside Pensacola campus M. D. and PA students. He has also tended to the uninsured through Interfaith Ministries Good Samaritan Clinic in Gulf Breeze for more than 20 years.
Following 24-plus years of impassioned service, McLeod is retiring in October.
“ I want to leave the campus in great shape,” said McLeod, who shared his decision with College of Medicine Dean Dr. Alma Littles, last fall.“ I want to leave when I’ m still performing well and I still love the job... It’ s kind of time now for new eyes, new leadership, a younger person. I think it’ s just time for that and you’ ve got to draw the line somewhere.”
To put McLeod’ s nearly quarter-century of service and leadership into perspective, consider this:
• He was hired seven months before now-Dean Littles;
• Only four current College of Medicine employees have more years of continuous service;
A Pensacola native, McLeod was working as the medical director for Med3000 in 2001 when he learned about the upstart college’ s unique medical education concept from Mollie Hill, then its director of community clinical relations. He was well-aware of the medical needs in the Florida Panhandle, having shared a family medicine practice in nearby Milton, Florida, with Dr. Dennis Mayeaux.
Training medical students locally, who would return to the area after residency and serve the underserved, struck a chord.
“ I thought,‘ That’ s the most amazing concept that I’ ve heard of in medical education,’” McLeod said.“ Dr. Mayeaux and I both said we want to be a part of that. We look back now and laugh that these two country doctors practicing in Milton had the opportunity to be a part of this... We just sit with amazement and go,‘ Why would they even have us?’ I don’ t know, but we’ re glad that they did.”
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