When the College of Medicine earned full accreditation in 2005, it was the first new school in the nation in more than 20 years. Over the past six years, however, seven new schools in six states have received preliminary accreditation and have enrolled their charter classes, and seven additional proposed schools have attained applicant status. While the same physician work force issues that contributed to the establishment of a new medical school at FSU in 2000 clearly had a major role in creation of the other new schools, a potentially greater contribution of the College of Medicine to this new wave of medical schools is its innovative instructional delivery model. The college has served as a role model and convener for the New and Developing Medical School Consortium that is funded by the Josiah Macy Foundation through AAMC. Longtime leaders in medical education are taking note of the FSU approach. For instance, Michael Whitcomb, the former editor of Academic Medicine and Senior Vice President for Medical Education at AAMC, recently wrote:
“The current period of medical school expansion has witnessed the emergence of a fundamental restructuring of the traditional departmental arrangements that have existed for decades in the overwhelming majority of medical schools. The development of the Florida State University College of Medicine set an example for other new schools by establishing only five departments — Biomedical Sciences, Clinical Sciences, Family Medicine and Rural Health, Geriatrics, and Medical Humanities and Social Sciences.” Whitcomb also observed that the structure for clinical faculty is changing along the lines of the FSU model. He noted that:
“Most of the new schools will depend on existing university faculty and the hospitals’ medical staffs to provide leadership for the development and implementation of the schools’ educational programs.”
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