Founding Dean Of Medical Schools At The University Of Florida And Penn State Dies Near Home In North Carolina
GAINESVILLE—Dr. George T. Harrell Jr., the founding dean of medical colleges at the University of Florida and at Pennsylvania State University, died today (Aug. 26) at Duke University’s hospital in Durham, N.C., after a brief illness. He was 91.
Harrell’s vision for patient-centered physician training influenced modern medical education. His leadership in establishing two successful U.S. medical colleges, and the book he wrote, “Planning Medical Center Facilities,” led to his role as a worldwide consultant on developing medical schools and hospitals. He also earned worldwide recognition for his research on Rocky Mountain spotted fever during the 1940s.
. Harrell was recruited to the University of Florida in 1954 to design and develop the College of Medicine. He joined the late Dr. J. Hillis Miller, who was then the UF president, and former Provost Dr. Russell S. Poor in seeking the initial $5 million state appropriation to construct a building for the colleges of Medicine and Nursing. The two schools opened in 1956 as the first components of the UF Health Science Center, which now includes six colleges, an urban campus in Jacksonville, and affiliated programs throughout Florida.
While steering the College of Medicine through its first decade of growth, Harrell emphasized the importance of training physicians to understand and care for the entire patient. He advocated training students in small groups to prepare them to work effectively on multidisciplinary health-care teams. He also created the first-ever departments of humanities, family and community medicine, and behavioral science in a medical school. Now 90 percent of medical schools offer programs in the humanities.
Today, the founding dean’s philosophies for training skilled and compassionate physicians are implemented at UF’s Harrell Professional Development and Assessment Center, where trained actors serve as model patients who help students refine the art of diagnosis and communication.
“Dr. Harrell’s goal of educating the health team to care for patients in their communities has timeless significance,” said Dr. Robert T. Watson, UF’s senior associate dean for educational affairs, who was a medical student during Harrell’s tenure as dean. Dr. Jean Bennett, a Clearwater pediatrician who graduated from the UF College of Medicine in 1960, said she remembers Dr. Harrell’s emphasis on the whole patient.
“Most of all, I remember him telling us we should pay attention to every aspect of the patient’s medical, social and emotional needs, and that we should develop the ability as physicians to serve those needs,” said Bennett, a lifelong friend of the late dean’s. “He was very opposed to the fragmentation of medical care.”
Harrell left UF in 1964 to develop the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center at Pennsylvania State University. After serving as founding dean there, he became the university’s vice president for medical sciences.
During recent years, while living in a retirement community near Duke University, Harrell researched and wrote scholarly articles on Lady Osler and Sir William Osler, founding chairman of medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and an early leader of American medical education.
A native of Washington, D.C., Harrell earned his medical degree and completed residency training in pathology and medicine at Duke, which named him a distinguished alumnus in 1969. UF also awarded him a presidential medal and a distinguished service award.
The UF College of Medicine and Penn State both are planning memorial services.