March 15, 2011

Members of the Florida State University College of Medicine Class of 2011 will find out where they will receive residency training — a defining moment in their medical careers — during a Match Day ceremony on Thursday.

During the ceremony, the students will simultaneously open envelopes, learning for the first time where they will spend the next three to seven years completing training in the medical specialty they will practice. Graduating students at M.D.-granting medical schools across the United States receive their match information at the same time through the National Residency Matching Program, the primary system that matches applicants to residency programs with available positions at U.S. teaching hospitals.

The ceremony will take place:

THURSDAY, MARCH 17
NOON
RUBY DIAMOND CONCERT HALL

The ceremony also will be webcast live. Visit http://www.med.fsu.edu/ for more information.

CONTACT: Doug Carlson
(850) 645-1255; doug.carlson@med.fsu.edu

 CONTACT: Doug Carlson
(850) 645-1255 or (850) 694-3735; doug.carlson@med.fsu.edu
 
By Doug Carlson
March 17, 2011
 

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — All 114 students in the Class of 2011 — the seventh and largest class to graduate from the medical school — found out during a Match Day ceremony today where they will enter residency training this summer after graduation.
 
Sixty-one of the graduating students, or 54 percent, are entering residency in primary care specialties, including family medicine, pediatrics, internal medicine and obstetrics/gynecology. Other students matched in anesthesiology, emergency medicine, neurology, orthopedic surgery, otolaryngology, pathology, psychiatry, diagnostic radiology, general surgery and urology.
 
“I’m very pleased that once again our students have matched at excellent programs throughout Florida and the rest of the country. We are producing great students who are sought out by the best programs,” said College of Medicine Dean John P. Fogarty. “I am also pleased that the top choices for our students continue to be in primary care and general surgery, consistent with our mission of creating the kind of doctors that Florida needs the most.”
 
At the same time, Fogarty said, the number of students leaving the state for training is a strong indication of the need for more residency programs in Florida.
 
“Partnerships like the one we just established with Tallahassee Memorial Hospital to sponsor an internal medicine residency are critical to meeting Florida’s physician work force needs,” he said.
 
The residency match, conducted annually by the National Resident Matching Program, is the primary system that matches applicants to residency programs with available positions at U.S. teaching hospitals. Graduating medical students across the country receive their match information at the same time on the same day.
# # #
For information about FSU’s Match Day history, visit /alumnifriends/residency-match-day-results
 

To see where past College of Medicine graduates are practicing, visit http://public.med.fsu.edu/alumni/alumni.aspx?class=2005

For five days during the first week in April, the College of Medicine hosted a six-person accreditation survey team representing the Liaison Committee on Medical Education. The important visit took less than a week, but the college’s effort to make a strong impression was years in the making.

The site visit is a key step in the path to reaccreditation. While there are indications that the visit was a success, the process is not complete. The site visit team's findings will be forwarded to the LCME, which possibly will render a decision about the College of Medicine's reaccreditation during a regularly scheduled meeting in Chicago in October.

“While a number of new medical schools have started since we received our initial accreditation in 2005, we are the newest medical school undergoing the reaccreditation process in this century,” said Alma Littles, senior associate dean for medical education and academic affairs.

The survey team was made up of representatives from six medical schools and included two deans, a professor of internal medicine, a fourth-year medical student, a vice dean for academic affairs and an associate dean for medical education.

The team now will produce the report that will serve as the basis for the LCME vote on whether to approve the College of Medicine’s reaccreditation through 2019. In the report, the survey team will describe the College of Medicine’s educational program and account for how well it complies with accreditation standards.“The LCME states, ‘Institutional accreditation assures that medical education takes place in a sufficiently rich environment to foster broad academic purposes,’” Littles said. 

Formal preparations for the site visit began with a committee meeting at the main campus in November 2009, but an argument could be made that preparations actually began as soon as the College of Medicine received its initial full accreditation in February 2005.Since then, the college has opened new regional campuses in Sarasota, Daytona Beach and Fort Pierce and rural clinical training sites in Marianna and Immokalee; graduated six classes; and grown from around 170 medical students to its current full enrollment of 480.

“Celebrating the College of Medicine’s 10th anniversary this past year while reviewing our strategic plan and performing our year-long LCME self-study highlighted how far the medical school has come in our short lifetime,” said John P. Fogarty, who arrived as dean in August 2008.“We have now expanded to full enrollment, fully opened and succeeded at our regional campuses and rural sites, and built a strong research portfolio since the last LCME site visit in 2004.”

The 18-month round of formal preparations leading up to the April 3-7 site visit were devoted to compiling a medical education database used as the basis for performing an institutional self-study.

“The institutional self-study is one of the most important activities we undertake as a College of Medicine,” Littles said. “More than 100 individuals participated directly in our self-study process, and more than 1,000 faculty members and students responded to surveys that were implemented as a part of that process. Five subcommittees and an independent student self-study committee collected more than 1,300 pages of data, responding to the 125 LCME accreditation standards.” 

The database mailed to the LCME in February was packed into eight boxes and weighed more than 300 pounds. Those boxes contained plenty of success stories that should carry some weight with the survey team.

“Our graduation and match statistics, our strong board scores and student performance with our community model, and the impacts we are having across the state have validated that this model is working and working very well,” Fogarty said. “We appreciated having an opportunity to share examples of that success with our site visitors."

In addition to spending 2½ days at the main campus, the survey team split up for visits to regional campuses in Tallahassee, Daytona Beach and Pensacola, along with an afternoon at the rural clinical training site in Marianna. The team met with students from the main campus and from the regional campuses, faculty, administrators, staff, clerkship directors and clerkship faculty.

Accreditation procedures
 

PRESS RELEASE

FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY CONTACTS:
Mark Kasper, director, Institute of Sports Sciences and Medicine; (850) 644-1829 or mkasper@fsu.edu
Rob Wilson, Athletics; (850) 644-5678 or rlwilson@fsu.edu
Doug Carlson, College of Medicine; (850) 645-1255 or doug.carlson@med.fsu.edu
Robert C. Eklund, College of Education; (850) 645-2909 or erobert@fsu.edu
Libby Fairhurst, News and Public Affairs, (850) 644-4030 or efairhurst@fsu.edu
 
TALLAHASSEE ORTHOPEDIC CLINIC (TOC) CONTACTS:
Dr. Tom Haney, M.D.; (850) 893-2429 or thaneyhsd@earthlink.net
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. —  Florida State University (FSU) experts in medicine, exercise science, nutrition, sports psychology and athletic training have partnered with one of the nation’s premier sports medicine and orthopedic treatment centers to establish the Institute of Sports Sciences and Medicine (ISSM), a public-private collaboration that spells good news for millions of athletes of all ages.
 
Based at Florida State, the institute will lead interdisciplinary research and educational outreach programs focused on the development of elite-level athletic and human performance –– including an emphasis on long-term health and the prevention and treatment of athletic injuries such as concussions.
 
A formidable team, the ISSM links a top-tier research university and sports powerhouse with distinguished sports medicine physicians at Tallahassee Orthopedic Clinic (TOC), which has provided comprehensive orthopedic health care for more than 35 years.
 
“Our institute’s focus is the end-users –– athletes of all ages –– and all its activities will be designed to directly benefit them by promoting peak performance and optimal health,” said ISSM Director Mark J. Kasper, a faculty member in FSU’s Department of Nutrition, Food and Exercise Sciences. “Our research and outreach efforts will target the general public as well as the medical and scientific communities.”
 
Under construction is a state-of-the-art Human Performance Laboratory that will house the ISSM research and programs. Located near the Florida State University track-and-field complex, the laboratory is slated for completion by fall. Then, research will become a key part of the game plan.
 
Among the forthcoming projects:
 
• Physicians from TOC will lead a study of “autologous conditioned plasma” –– also known as platelet-rich plasma –– which may help to speed the healing of persistent tendon injuries. To obtain the plasma, a patient’s blood is drawn and spun to separate the platelet-rich portion from the red blood cells. The platelet-rich plasma is then injected back into the patient at the injury site. While some U.S. sports-medicine doctors are already performing the procedure, it is still considered experimental.
• Kasper will develop a database for athletes –– especially those at the high school level –– to track the incidence and prevalence of injuries and other chronic conditions over time as athletes age.

• For medical students interested in sports sciences and medicine, Dr. Daniel Van Durme, chairman of the FSU College of Medicine’s Department of Family Medicine and Rural Health, is developing ISSM mentoring opportunities that will include summer research fellowships and research electives during the fall and spring semesters.
“The rural, minority, elderly and other underserved populations with which College of Medicine students work may particularly benefit from the institute’s efforts to better understand and improve exercise behaviors,” Van Durme said.
 
When it comes to the practical application of cutting-edge sports medicine research, FSU Intercollegiate Athletics Director Randy Spetman predicts an international role for the institute and an invaluable one closer to home.
 
“We are very pleased that our outstanding student-athletes will have the opportunity to work within this innovative program and benefit from an association with world-class experts in the sports-medicine field,” said Spetman, a key member of the ISSM team along with Athletics’ award-winning strength-and-conditioning coach, Jon Jost.
 
Institute partner Dr. Tom C. Haney of TOC has a long association with Florida State University –– as a former student (B.S., biological science, 1964), a courtesy professor in the College of Human Sciences, and in his work as FSU team physician from 1975-2009.
 
“All of our TOC physicians have published research articles in the past, but the demands of our orthopedic practices make it very difficult to pursue our research ideas,” Haney said. “Now, the Institute of Sports Sciences and Medicine gives us a rare, wonderful opportunity to work with FSU professors and students on beneficial research in areas of mutual interest.”
 
In addition to Kasper, institute leaders at Florida State include associate directors Angela Sehgal and Michele Garber, athletic trainers in the College of Human Sciences. Joining institute partner Spetman and advisors Jost (Athletics) and Van Durme (College of Medicine) is College of Education Professor Robert C. Eklund, an internationally recognized expert in sports psychology. From Tallahassee Orthopedic Clinic, CEO Martin Shipman joins Drs. Haney and Steve E. Jordan as institute partners.
 
For an online version of this story, associated images, and a video featuring Kasper, Shipman and Jost, visit the Florida State University news site at http://fsu.edu/news/2011/05/11/sports.sciences/.
 
For additional information about Tallahassee Orthopedic Clinic, go to www.tlhoc.com.
 

CONTACT: John Fraser, FSU Office of Intellectual Property
Development and Commercialization
(850) 644-8637; jfraser@techtransfer.fsu.edu
 
By Elizabeth Bettendorf
June 2011
TO MOVE CUTTING-EDGE RESEARCH FROM LAB TO MARKETPLACE
Researchers at Florida State University seeking to shepherd their research out of the laboratory and into the crowded commercial marketplace have a friend in the FSU Research Foundation. Since 2005, the foundation has funded a highly energetic — and competitive — grant program that supports those researchers and their extraordinary efforts.
 
The Grant Assistance Program, or GAP, awards those who can most clearly identify the commercial feasibility of a process, product, license or start-up company that they believe will grow from their endeavors with a commercial partner.
 
The GAP awards are given out twice yearly. The four projects that earned GAP funding during the most recent awards cycle (Spring 2011) are:
 
• Nanobelt Biosensors: A $50,000 award goes to P. Bryant Chase, professor and chairman of the FSU Department of Biological Science, and Professor Peng Xiong of the Department of Physics, for the development and testing of a device that can be used to sense the presence of hepatitis C viral proteins. If the researchers are successful, their technology potentially has many other commercial applications.
• Light-Activated Agents for Anticancer Drugs: A $25,000 award goes to Professor Igor Alabugin of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry to further develop a novel cancer-fighting approach that uses exposure to light to activate a powerful class of anticancer molecules. When exposed to light, these molecules can target and destroy cancer cells while leaving healthy cells unharmed. If successful, Alabugin will be much closer to developing a therapy regime that will be of great commercial interest to the cancer research industry.
• A Novel Approach to Treating Stroke Victims: A $25,000 award goes to Ewa Bienkiewicz, an assistant scholar/scientist in the Department of Biomedical Sciences, for development of a therapeutic agent that can go into the body and naturalize the effect of toxic hemin release following a stroke. Hemin is a byproduct of the breakdown of hemoglobin, which occurs after a stroke.  Currently there is only one approved option for stroke patients, a “clot-buster” class of drugs that must be given within three hours of a stroke. This new therapy could begin up to 24 hours following a stroke’s onset. The GAP funding will help Bienkiewicz take her current work much closer to a point where it will have commercial opportunity. High Performance Flexible Batteries: A $12,000 award goes to Professor Richard Liang of FSU’s High Performance Materials Institute, and Jesse Smithyman, a doctoral student working under Liang, for a technology that uses carbon nanotubes as the basis for smaller, more flexible batteries that will be part of the devices they power. Liang and his fellow researchers will take the flexible battery technology through more rigid testing and evaluation and bring it closer to where it can be built into “real” products.

All GAP award recipients will be assigned a team of mentors composed of local business leaders. The groups will meet four times a year to provide expertise and assistance with product development.
 
“One of the most important contributions that large research universities can make is to nurture the scientific and technological expertise that our society depends on to generate commercially viable breakthroughs in medicine, computer technology, energy generation and so many other areas,” said Kirby Kemper, Florida State’s vice president for Research. “With this new round of GAP awards, we are able to support researchers who may be on the brink of bringing research break-throughs to market. “
 
For more information about the GAP Program at Florida State University, visit http://www.techtransfer.fsu.edu.
 
To read this article online and view associated images and a video clip featuring the award winners, visit http://www.fsu.com/Featured-Stories/Four-FSU-projects-win-GAP-awards-to-move-cutting-edge-research-from-lab-to-marketplace.
 

On Monday, the Florida State University College of Medicine and Lee Memorial Health System will unveil plans for a doctor training program intended to create more primary care physicians for Southwest Florida.

At present, Florida ranks 43rd nationally in number of the number of medical residents. The fourth most populous state in the nation, Florida faces a severe physician shortage particularly in primary care specialties, in rural areas and in the number of doctors to care for the state’s rapidly expanding population of older patients.

On average, 60 percent of graduating medical students in Florida leave the state for residency training. A physician is far more likely to set up practice in the community where he or she completes graduate medical education (residency or fellowship) than near where he or she graduated from medical school. Presently, there are no allopathic residency programs south of Tampa along Florida’s west coast.

Participating in the announcement will be Florida State University College of Medicine Dean John P. Fogarty and Richard Akin, chairman of the board at Lee Memorial Health System and president and CEO of Collier Health Services, Inc.

MONDAY, AUGUST 8

NOON

LEE MEMORIAL HOSPITAL AUDITORIUM
2776 CLEVELAND AVE.
FORT MYERS
(near the entrance to the emergency room)
 

By Doug Carlson 
 

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — The Florida State University College of Medicine and the Lee Memorial Health System Board of Directors today announced plans to create a family medicine residency program in Fort Myers.
 
The program, expected to produce six new family practice physicians a year when at full capacity, will be the first allopathic residency program south of Tampa/St. Petersburg along Florida’s southwest coast. Among the fastest growing regions in the state, the area is in need of more physicians to take care of a population that grew by more than 40 percent in Lee County between 2000 and 2010.
 
“This is an exciting first for Southwest Florida,” said Richard Akin, chairman of the board of Lee Memorial Health System. “Bringing a medical residency program to our community will improve the delivery of health care to our residents, and the opportunity to partner with Florida State University’s medical school enhances our community’s reputation as well.”
 
The family medicine residency program will be based at Lee Memorial Hospital with the Florida State University College of Medicine as its institutional sponsor. The program could begin taking applications from prospective residents as early as 2012 and admit its first class in July 2013.
 
Medical school graduates are required to complete residency training in their chosen specialty in order to gain board certification and become an independently practicing physician. Numerous studies have shown that most physicians end up practicing near where they completed residency training.
 
At present, Florida ranks 43rd nationally in the number of residents per 100,000 population, despite being the fourth-most-populous state in the country.
 
“In reaching our 10th anniversary with full enrollment and a great track record of success, we are now seeing the need to have more residency programs around the state to train our graduates and provide Florida communities with the doctors they most need,” said John P. Fogarty, M.D., dean of the College of Medicine, a board-certified family physician and chair of the Florida Council of Medical School Deans.
 
“One of the top priorities of my fellow medical school deans here in Florida is to support increasing the number of residency positions in Florida,” Fogarty said.
 
To date, 450 physicians have graduated from the FSU College of Medicine, which first accepted students in 2001. Family medicine and internal medicine are the top two residency program choices for College of Medicine alumni.
 
In 2011, 17 percent of Florida State’s 114 medical school graduates entered family medicine residency programs, with more than half of those heading out of state for residency training.
 
Nationally, 8.4 percent of all graduating U.S. medical students chose family medicine in 2011.
 
“Even though the number of our graduates to complete residency training at this point is relatively small, there is evidence that when they train in Florida it keeps them in Florida, especially in the communities where their training takes place,” said Alma Littles, M.D., senior associate dean for medical education and academic affairs at the FSU College of Medicine and a former Florida Family Physician of the Year.
 
“For example, all seven College of Medicine alumni who completed a family medicine residency program in Tallahassee in June now are practicing in North Florida,” Littles said.
 
Of the 47 FSU College of Medicine graduates to complete graduate medical education in Florida, 42 (89 percent) are now practicing in Florida.
 
Funding for graduate medical education comes from a variety of sources, primarily from the federal government through Medicare. The number of federally funded residency training slots was capped in 1997 by the Balanced Budget Act. Florida has seen dramatic population increases in the interim, but its available number of residency slots has held steady.
 
“As the baby boomer population ages, we are going to need more primary care physicians in our community,” said Scott Nygaard, M.D., chief medical officer of physician services for Lee Memorial Health System. “We are creating this training program to address that need, and we are making the necessary financial commitment to create a pipeline of primary care physicians who will make Southwest Florida their home.”
 
The residency program will be the fourth for the FSU College of Medicine, which also sponsors programs in pediatrics and obstetrics-gynecology (in Pensacola) and internal medicine (in Tallahassee).
 
“The College of Medicine commends Lee Memorial Health System for recognizing the return on investment to the patient community by training more primary care physicians, despite limitations in federal funding,” said Christopher Mulrooney, assistant dean for graduate medical education and chief operating officer of the College of Medicine faculty practice plan.
 
“The reality is that health care cannot be provided to those who need it without enough providers to do the job,” Mulrooney said. “Lee Memorial understands that reality.”
###

CONTACT: Doug Carlson, FSU College of Medicine
(850) 694-3735; doug.carlson@med.fsu.edu 
-or-
Mary Briggs, Lee Memorial Health System
(239) 454-8765; mary.briggs@leememorial.org

The Florida State University College of Medicine has been granted a maximum eight-year accreditation by the sanctioning body of U.S. medical schools.
 
With the favorable ruling from the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME), Florida State becomes the first new medical school of the 21st century to be reaccredited.
 
“This news was not unexpected based on the remarkable outcomes this medical school has produced since the first class of 30 students arrived in 2001,” said College of Medicine Dean John P. Fogarty. “The leaders, administrators, faculty and students who helped plan and build this program should be extremely proud, as should all of our friends and supporters.”
 
LCME accreditation occurs every eight years as part of a nearly two-year process that includes a rigorous self-study by the applying institution and a thorough inspection from the LCME site visit team. Florida State’s site visit took place in early April.
 
The survey team was made up of representatives from six medical schools and included two deans, a professor of internal medicine, a fourth-year medical student, a vice dean for academic affairs and an associate dean for medical education.
 
Their report served as the basis for the LCME’s decision regarding Florida State’s compliance with accreditation standards in five areas: institutional setting, educational program for the M.D. degree, medical students, faculty and educational resources. Only LCME-accredited institutions may receive federal grants for medical education and participate in federal loan programs.
 
In addition, attendance at an LCME-accredited program is required for U.S. allopathic medical students before they can take the U.S. Medical Licensing Exam or enter residency programs approved by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education.
 
“Institutional accreditation assures that medical education takes place in a sufficiently rich environment to foster broad academic purposes,” said Dr. Alma Littles, senior associate dean for medical education and academic affairs at the College of Medicine.
 
In its letter of accreditation, the LCME cited several areas of strength within the program at Florida State:
 
·         “The College of Medicine is a student-centered, educationally focused organization in which decision making and priority setting are guided by its primary mission to develop exemplary, patient-oriented physicians.”
 
·         “The College of Medicine has a long-standing, well-organized and successful program for pipeline development and recruitment of students of diverse backgrounds.”
 
·         “The community faculty apprenticeship model of clinical education provides students with the opportunity to see large numbers of patients, to be involved in all aspects of their care, and to be closely observed for development of competence in their roles as physicians.”
 
·         “The College of Medicine should be commended for an impressive faculty development program, particularly for the diverse nature of the offerings and the sheer volume of effort expended to support the development of faculty on an ongoing basis.”
 
·         “The retention rate for community faculty is high, creating a stable educational platform for the clinical program.”
 
Florida State is one of four fully accredited allopathic medical schools in Florida, along with those at the universities of Florida, Miami and South Florida.
 
Florida State began formal preparations for its LCME site visit in November 2009, conducting an exhaustive self-study involving more than 100 faculty, staff, administrators and students. The study took more than 18 months to complete.
 
Since first gaining full accreditation status in 2005, the Florida State University College of Medicine has opened new regional campuses in Sarasota, Fort Pierce and Daytona Beach and rural clinical training sites in Marianna and Immokalee; graduated seven classes; and grown from around 170 medical students to a full enrollment of 480. The new regional campuses are in addition to previously opened campuses in Orlando, Pensacola and Tallahassee.
 
LCME site-visit committee members indicated they were impressed by how well Florida State administers its community-based program, which sends third- and fourth-year students to cities across the state to receive one-on-one clinical training from experienced physicians. The learning takes place where the vast majority of people receive their health care, giving students the opportunity to directly interact with patients and take part in the types of cases they are most likely to encounter as practicing physicians.
 
The model is credited with helping Florida State produce a greater percentage of graduates entering primary care residency programs than any other medical school in the state since 2005.
 
“Our graduation and match statistics, our strong board scores and student performance with our community model, and the impacts we are having across the state have validated that this model is working and working very well,” Fogarty said. “We appreciated having an opportunity to share examples of that success with our LCME site visitors.”
 
The LCME is a joint committee of the American Medical Association and the Association of American Medical Colleges.
 
 

October 2011

What began as a big week for the Florida State University College of Medicine became even bigger. On Oct. 21, two days after celebrating the news that it had been reaccredited for eight years by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, the college got similar news about its graduate medical education program.

That vote of confidence from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education means the medical school can continue to be a sponsoring institution for residency programs, the next step for medical students after their M.D. degree. The College of Medicine has two such programs at Sacred Heart Hospital in Pensacola: one in pediatrics and one in obstetrics-gynecology. It also is launching an internal medicine residency program with Tallahassee Memorial Hospital and a family medicine one with Lee Memorial Hospital in Fort Myers.

“As the first new medical school of the 21st century, it’s very meaningful to have outside validation of the successful outcomes our program is producing,” said Dr. Alma Littles, senior associate dean for medical education and academic affairs.

“We are working hard to prepare our students to be successful in their graduate medical education following the completion of medical school. We’ve seen this hard work paying off in the feedback we get from residency program directors about the quality of our graduates, including the high percentage of our graduates who are awarded chief resident status.

“With this seal of approval from the ACGME, we have a clear statement that we also will be there to help provide excellent training opportunities beyond medical school.”