Medical students will soon have a chance to complete some of their training in southwest Florida. Final preparations are underway for the July opening of the Florida State University College of Medicine’s Sarasota campus. The school is community-based...which means it employs local physicians to help train students. Dean Dr. Bruce Berg says the Sarasota campus expands FSU’s so-called “distributed model.”

“That means that medical students go for the 1st two years…which are the basic science years…to Tallahassee proper. The 3rd and 4th year, which are the clinical years where the students really learn how to take care of people…are then accomplished, that is their training is accomplished, in campuses that are around the state. This is the 4th one.”

Berg says 9 students have already been selected to work in Sarasota… and start training in July. They’ll do clinical rotations in family and internal medicine, pediatrics, obstetrics, surgery and psychiatry. The school will have as many as 40 students in a few years. Dr. Berg also hopes programs like this will help bring doctors to…and keep them in…Florida…by getting them to establish local ties during their hands-on training.