“ Honestly, it’ s been great working here,” said Katherine Keane, M. D., who, along with fellow resident Nicholas Dietschweiler, D. O., is in her second year of the threeyear program.“ The staff are all wonderful. We feel like we make a difference in these patients’ lives. There’ s so much that we get to do for them; so much that we get to see. So, it’ s very enriching for us as well as being beneficial to these patients who need medical care.”
Dietschweiler echoed her sentiments, adding,“ Most of us go into family medicine to serve the underserved. This is a good opportunity to give back to our community that’ s accepted us and for us to really make a difference but also learn in the process.”
Joshua Hodge, M. D., program director for the FSU Family Medicine Residency Program at Ascension Sacred Heart Emerald Coast, has been with the residency program since it began six years ago. He is passionate about finding ways to provide healthcare resources to underserved populations. Just this year, he was the primary investigator on one of six grants awarded to the College of Medicine as part of the Rural Health Transformation Program. Hodge and co-PI Lisa Hightow-Weidman from the College of Nursing, were awarded nearly $ 6 million for a project focused on providing care to the people of Northwest Florida.
With the help of the FSU-Ascension residents, the clinic in Point Washington continues to add services such as a pharmacy, lab, dental care and soon, a kitchen to offer cooking tips for good nutrition. What may be one of the crown jewels soon to be added is a mobile clinic.
“ The most exciting part about this clinic is that it is always innovating, such as the mobile clinic that will go out and touch people where they live,” Hodge said.
Without question, the FSU College of Medicine Graduate Medical Education enterprise continues to strategically grow residency and fellowship programs with its healthcare partners to address the physician workforce shortage in the state. It is programs like the FSU-Ascension Emerald Coast Family Medicine Residency Program that have a positive impact on entire communities and individual lives, like James Sizemore’ s.
“ I was trying to take care of myself at home, versus go to the doctor and get a bunch of bills that I could not afford to pay,” Sizemore said.“ This place, to me, is awesome.”
“ I am a firm believer that education and service are synergistic,” Hodge said.“ The more that we can use education to get out and serve people where they need it most, we should do that.” This is one reason why he jumped at the opportunity to partner with the Point Washington Clinic.
“ We were losing the only other free clinic in the community, and I was encouraged by Roger Hall, past president of Ascension Sacred Heart Emeral Coast and a staunch advocate for serving the uninsured and underinsured in our community to reach out to Hillary and see if there was a way that the residency program could support her and her clinic,” Hodge said.“ It’ s been an absolute amazing partnership.”
FSU Family Medicine resident physicians such as Nicholas Dietschweiler, D. O., can treat patients of every age, unlike physicians in other specialties, which are limited to the types of patients they can see.