Medicine Curated

Former FMA Board member Hansel Tookes III, MD, MPH, is Founder and Medical Director of the IDEA Exchange, a groundbreaking Miami-Dade needle exchange program that was the first of its kind in Florida. In a wide-ranging conversation with FMA CEO Timothy J. Stapleton, Dr. Tookes, an internal medicine physician who is also Principal Investigator of the University of Miami Harm Reduction Research Group, talks about his passion for public health and how the IDEA Exchange has adjusted to continue meeting patients' needs during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Family medicine clinician and physician coach Amaryllis Sánchez Wohlever, MD, talks to FMA CEO Timothy J. Stapleton about the many factors affecting doctors’ well-being and her calling to to help physicians reclaim their professional joy. ‘I care about each of them as people, as human beings who feel called to serving others with excellence,’ she said. Dr. Sánchez Wohlever, a graduate of the FMA’s Physician Leadership Academy, is also a speaker and author whose books include ‘Recapturing Joy in Medicine.’

When it comes to supporting her fellow doctors, direct primary care physician Rebekah Bernard, MD has a way with words. Currently serving as Collier County Medical Society President, Dr. Bernard is an FMA member, physician wellness authority, and prolific writer whose work has appeared in KevinMD, Medical Economics, and the FMA's own Florida Medical Magazine. Dr. Bernard discusses the importance of restoring physicians' professional joy and challenging ‘the death of medical expertise’ in healthcare.

As Dean of the University of South Florida Morsani College of Medicine and USF Health Senior Vice President, FMA member Charles Lockwood, MD, has overseen a transformative era for both institutions.

A leader of the Florida College of Emergency Physicians during this pandemic, Sanjay Pattani, MD, FACEP is also Medical Director of AdventHealth’s Mission Control Command Center, and member of the FMA Board of Governors.

We talk vaccination with Dr. Lisa Gwynn, Medical Director of the UHealth Pediatric Mobile Clinic and the Dr. John T. Macdonald Foundation School Health Initiative and President of the Florida Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

We highlight some of the advances that the FMA has made over the last few years to make it easier and less expensive to access the CME that physicians need to maintain their Florida license. This includes the online CME catalog which is available to physicians 24/7 and livestream/webinar services that have been implemented.

Can Direct Primary Care increase access to health care, reduce costs, and improve care and outcomes? Dr. Lee Gross has done all of those things and shares his experience.

We talk about how the state legislative process works with Chris Clark, the Senior Vice President of Public Affairs at the FMA - which is a fancy way of saying he oversees the State Legislative and Political Operations of the Florida Medical Association.

While the FMA has primarily been engaged in public policy issues at the State level for many years, working on behalf of physicians in Tallahassee, in the last few years we have expanded our focus to include advocacy at the Feberal level. This development came in response to our members who have been facing more and more challenges as the result of decisions made at the by Feberal lGovernment in Washington, D.C.