A Crestview campus for Florida International University has been in the works since about 2009. The campus will build on an existing physician’s assistant program that allows the completion of clinical rotations and residencies for students of northwest Florida.

Rotations permit students to apply knowledge learned in the classroom in a working environment and are required in medical schools. Completion is performed at a hospital or local practice within a student’s field of study.

A provisional accreditation of the program was required before classes could be hosted. This approval was an external peer review conducted by the Accreditation Review Commission on Education for the Physician Assistant to ensure the program’s educational and professional quality.

Completion of this process takes about a year to enact and several more years to be conducted. A provisional approval was granted to the FIU PA program in Apr. 2015. This allows the program to seek a final approval known as accreditation-continued.

The ARC-PA requires five consecutive years of accreditation-continued for a program to be eligible for a satellite campus. Students are still able to complete classes, residencies and rotations without the presence of a physical campus.

Allowing students to complete their education outside the Miami area, where FIU is based, is the program’s goal. Targeting Crestview for the site was partially due to the area’s military presence according to Pete Gutierrez, the associate dean and founding chair of FIU’s physician assistant school.

The program and future campus would allow more individuals to further their education. This will help strengthen a growing medical field, according to Gutierrez.

The PA program is a master’s program requiring applicants to have a bachelor’s degree, complete the Graduate Record Exam and submit letters of recommendation.

The program accepted its first round of 45 students in Crestview in 2015, followed by another group of 45 in 2016. Second-year students began their rotations January 2017 through the program.

A satellite campus is still years away, despite the program accepting and educating students.

Accreditation-continued takes at least 18 months from where the program is now and Gutierrez expects this to be completed in 2018-19. The ARC-PA requires a program to maintain accreditation-continued for five years before becoming eligible for a satellite campus.

Students can conduct and complete their FIU PA education in northwest Florida, but don’t expect to see a campus in the area until at least 2023.