When your dad’s the doctor — the doctor in a small Iowa town — you’re going to get your share of exposure to medicine.

That’s even if you don’t trail your father around on house calls, which Daniel R. Wilson, M.D., Ph.D., did regularly.

Wilson remembers when one of the local police officers who moonlighted as a tree surgeon came to the house after a chainsaw mishap. The man knocked on the door with one hand, trying to pin the other on his thigh hard enough to stop the blood from gushing everywhere. It didn’t work.

"Vi," the man said to Wilson’s mother, Viola, "is Doc here?"

He wasn’t, but where he got hurt was closer to the house than the office and, well, since it was around lunchtime he figured Doc might be home.

"Things like that happened all the time — all the time," Wilson said.

It was the start of a passion for medicine that has taken Wilson to the newest challenge in his medical career: vice president of the University of Florida Health Science Center-Jacksonville and dean of the UF College of Medicine-Jacksonville.

Wilson started his new role Feb. 1, coming from Creighton University in Omaha, Neb., where he was chair of the department of psychiatry for 12 years.

David S. Guzick, M.D., Ph.D., senior vice president for health affairs at UF and president of the UF&Shands Health System, said Wilson’s combination of academic and hospital experience made him the top choice.

"He’s a great fit," Guzick said. "He blends all of the needs of an academic health center."

Wilson said the dynamics of growing up in a big family—he’s the seventh of eight kids—in a town of 1,500 helped breed an interest in how people interacted, which led him to psychiatry.

"I always enjoyed trying to figure out what was going on in my family, as well as what was going on in my hometown," Wilson said.

Wilson is getting acclimated to campus, although climate itself isn’t an issue, since it was 6 degrees when the moving van showed up in Nebraska earlier this year.

He wants to continue to push research and "wave the University of Florida flag" a little more in the community, touting the academic health center as a place everyone would want to seek care.

His past positions include being on the faculty at Harvard Medical School and serving as medical director for Ohio’s nine mental hospitals with Integrated Health System. However, it’s an experience in Iowa some 30 years ago that Wilson still draws on today.

"Baptism by fire"

Wilson was 20, preparing to head back to Yale University and continue pursuit of his anthropology degree. His father died and Wilson stayed home to be executor of the estate.

He began the process of transferring his father’s medical practice to another physician, wading knee-deep into weeds of financial and legal matters.

"That was a baptism by fire and quite an interesting initial foray into health care administration at age 20," Wilson said.

A local attorney and friend of the family guided Wilson through the process. He taught Wilson that you cannot fight every fight. You must select the important areas and focus on them.

Now that Wilson is leading the Jacksonville campus with nearly 400 faculty spread over a 10-city-block campus and clinics throughout North Florida, the need to focus is even clearer.

"I have tremendous confidence in his wisdom and his skills to navigate us through these tough years ahead," said Guy I. Benrubi, M.D., senior associate dean for clinical affairs and chair of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

Wilson said one of his priorities is to help the community understand the quality of physicians and care that is available throughout UF and Shands Jacksonville.

"I think there is high regard in the community for what Shands and the university are doing, but I think it is perceived more as a safety net hospital than appreciated for the full range of what’s going on here," Wilson said.

Wilson points to the UF Proton Therapy Institute as a prime example. Not only do people travel hundreds of miles for this technology, but also every patient is part of a massive clinical trial, Wilson said. And it’s starting to get to the maturation point where studies are being published, findings are being presented and grants are being handed out.

That blend of clinical and research activity is what helps get academic medical centers on the map and should be replicated in other areas, Wilson said.

Nowhere to go but up

After earning his medical degree from the University of Iowa, Wilson completed his residency as a joint appointee of Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General and McLean Hospitals. He stayed on faculty at Harvard for seven years and, when he decided to leave, he had an opportunity to follow a mentor to Stanford.

Instead, Wilson chose to go to the University of Cincinnati and become medical director of the Lewis Center of the Ohio Department of Mental Health — one of the country’s most notoriously troubled hospitals at the time.

"My friends thought I had lost my mind," Wilson said.

But Wilson said he didn’t question it. The move fit what he was looking for in a change and offered challenges different from Harvard and Stanford.

And there was nowhere to go but up.

"I guess I went into it thinking I would learn a lot and the place was so close to failure that if it collapsed, no one would blame me," Wilson said, laughing.

"And if there were some successes, it would be all to the good."

While he was there, he was part of a yearlong program in health care leadership where he and others learned from top hospital and health executives about the business and administration of medicine. He and others got the ship righted at Lewis, which Wilson says was a key development in his career growth.

"Going from a very fancy, well-funded place like Harvard Medical School to a public mental health sector that was a mess in Ohio and getting that turned around with teamwork was a terrific turning point," Wilson said.

Wilson’s hospital experience is a plus for Shands Jacksonville President and CEO Jim Burkhart, who said he hopes to have a solid working relationship with Wilson, as he did with previous dean Robert Nuss, M.D. Burkhart said Wilson brings a tremendous amount of experience in a variety of roles that will only help as the college and hospital try to move forward together.

"I really see this as a partnership, and I think Dr. Wilson does, too," Burkhart said. "I see us really speaking as one voice, with one set of overarching goals to accomplish here."

After leaving Ohio, Wilson built the psychiatry department at Creighton before being recruited to Jacksonville. He was drawn to the position by the quality of faculty, staff and administrators on campus.

"There is a sense of mission, both academic and service, that is very impressive," Wilson said. "It speaks to how special many people feel about the work they’re doing here, despite the challenges that exist."

After his year off attending to his father’s estate, Wilson finished his undergraduate degree in anthropology from Yale. He also earned a Ph.D. in biological anthropology from Queen’s College, Cambridge University in England.

Wilson’s daughter Victoria is now at college in the United Kingdom herself, studying English and history at the University of St. Andrews. Wilson lives in Mandarin with his wife Sandra and their two Bichon Frises, Monty and Lucy.

He’s continued to build on his career, while keeping the same passion and interest for medicine he learned by watching his father.

And, hopefully, he won’t have any more patients with chainsaw injuries knocking on his front door.

Featured Faculty

951

Guy I. Benrubi, MD, FACOG

Professor - Robert J. Thompson, M.D., Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology
Emeritus Chair, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology