“It is more important to know the patient that has the disease than it is to know the disease the patient has” - Sir William

Osler When I graduated from medical school in 1975, I felt like the focus at that time was disease-based medicine. There was much more emphasis on making the right diagnosis than there was on preventive approaches to treating patients. The “interesting patient” was the “enlarged liver” in room 1, the thyroid nodule in Room 6, or the “Fever of unknown origin” in Room 12. Perhaps that’s why I chose to be a family physician because I enjoyed getting to know patients and having a relationship with them over time.

In the last 25 years there has been a revolution in medical education in medical schools with earlier exposure to simulated or actual clinical patients, more integration of basic and clinical science concepts throughout the curriculum, and more focus on “patient centered care”, emphasizing patient autonomy, collaboration, and respect for individual preferences. The Florida State University College of Medicine, founded in 2000, was the first new medical school created in the US since the late 1970’s. It was founded to address a looming physician shortage, most acute in rural and underserved areas, and met resistance from organized medicine (AMA and AAMC) that felt that we had enough doctors.

FSU‘s vision was validated by the year 2007, when there was a call for a significant increase in medical graduates and led to a boom in creating over 30 new medical schools since that time. FSU further defied the conventional wisdom by training their graduates in community physician offices and hospitals, with the hope to encourage the graduates to practice in those communities in the future outside of the