Health Science Center
The University of Florida Health Science Center consists of the Colleges of Medicine, Dentistry, Nursing, Pharmacy, Health Related Professions, and Veterinary Medicine all located on the campus of the University of Florida. The Health Center Library (to their web site) contains a superb collection of books (> 300,000) and journals (> 2000) and offers a variety of electronic information services. The Medical School enrolls 120 students yearly and has >600 full-time faculty members.
Areas of excellence within the Health Center include brain and spinal cord research, diabetes, cancer, drug design and discovery, genetics, and organ and tissue transplantation. The University of Florida offers residency training in all major fields of medicine. The 576 bed Shands Hospital at the University of Florida, and adjacent 323 bed GVAMC hospital, are referral hospitals drawing patients from the entire southeast. Shands hospital admits >24,000 patients per year and the University of Florida Health Science Health Center has >220,000 outpatient visits per year. In 1991, the Shands Cancer center opened. In late 1998, the $60 million
Brain Institute opened. The hospitals are fully affiliated with each other and share attending and resident staff. This allows diversified experience and training. New off-site laboratory facilities opened in 2003 at the Rocky Point Laboratory. In 2003, the combined anatomic pathology services examined more than 30,000 surgical cases and consultations, 15,000 cytology cases, and 200 autopsies. The clinical laboratories performed approximately 1.6 million billed tests and provided more than 15,000 transfusions and typed and cross matched more than 25,000 units of blood. Extensive diagnostic facilities for immunopathology, image analysis, molecular pathology, flow cytometry and electron microscopy are available. The department uses dedicated anatomic and clinical pathology computer systems to provide on-line, real time communication between the Shands Hospital laboratories and physicians via terminals located in the laboratories and every ward and clinic. All laboratory tests are ordered and reports provided through this system, and all data are archived. The online medical record (OLMR) has greatly enhanced training, especially in clinical pathology.