"Florida is the most medically diverse state in America — retirees from every state, immigrants from every country, farmworkers from every part of Latin America, and rural communities that haven't changed in 50 years. UF trains physicians who can serve all of it."
"Shands Hospital in Gainesville is the referral center for much of rural north Florida. Patients arrive from the Panhandle, the Big Bend region, and North Central Florida — communities with limited local healthcare. Stations test whether you understand what it means to serve as a tertiary center for a largely rural, underinsured patient population."
"A retired 72-year-old woman with limited Medicare coverage presents with a new cancer diagnosis. She moved to Florida from Ohio after retirement and left her primary care physician of 30 years behind. She has no established care relationships here, limited family support, and early cognitive decline affecting her decision-making capacity. How do you approach her care?"
Practice this scenario with AI →the state's health complexity (rural poverty, agricultural workers, uninsured, climate impacts) is central to UF training.
like Texas, Florida has not expanded Medicaid, creating a large coverage gap.
climate and disaster medicine are specifically relevant at UF.
one of the most documented health inequity situations in the US.
"In 14 years of examining I have never failed a candidate for giving the 'wrong' answer. I have failed candidates for how they treated the person in the room with them."
Decision-making capacity assessment is a critical skill in geriatric medicine — know the difference between capacity (clinical determination) and competence (legal determination).
Florida has a large population of "recently relocated" retirees — patients who arrived without local care networks, whose families are distant, and whose medical histories are incomplete. This creates specific clinical challenges.
Know Florida's advance directive law: Florida honors living wills and healthcare surrogates; POLST (Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment) is used in Florida.
Immokalee, Florida is one of the most documented farmworker health crises in the US — predominantly Mexican and Central American migrant workers with extreme heat exposure, pesticide exposure, and no insurance.
The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) has created a fair food model that includes health access components — knowing this shows genuine engagement with the community.
Practice clinical scenarios involving occupational heat illness — Florida farmworkers have among the highest heat stroke mortality rates in the US.
Hurricane Ian (2022) devastated Fort Myers and Lee County; the health aftermath included mold exposure, contaminated water, medication loss, and mental health crisis.
Know that chronic disease management disruption (dialysis patients, insulin-dependent diabetics, oxygen-dependent COPD patients) is the primary cause of disaster-related mortality after the acute phase.
Sea level rise in South Florida is a planning and public health reality; know the health implications: saltwater intrusion into wells, flooding, and the disproportionate impact on low-income coastal communities.
The geriatric station was about a patient with early dementia who wasn't sure about cancer treatment. Capacity assessment, surrogate identification, and goals-of-care conversation in one 8-minute station. Know each of these as a distinct clinical and ethical skill.
Florida Medicaid non-expansion came up — a patient who makes $12/hour can't afford marketplace insurance and doesn't qualify for traditional Medicaid in Florida. Know who is in the gap and what clinical options exist.
The farmworker station was about an Immokalee worker with heat exhaustion who was afraid to miss work and lose his housing. Know the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and what the community's specific barriers are — it shows you know the real clinical context.