Charles Ibie, Chelsea Boston, Elving Colon, Stephanie Chase, and Vanessa Escobar all have expressed interest in the program and were given an up-close opportunity to learn more about it.

Jackson Hospital CEO Dave Hample, along with several physicians who work there, hosted the students for a breakfast and tour of the facility, then provided a look at the community, including a social visit to nearby Florida Caverns.

During the visit, the students had a chance to speak with pediatricians George Sanchez, Doyle Bosse and Tom Sherrel; internist Steven Spence; family physician Mark Akerson and surgeon Rick Brunner.

Akerson took the students on a tour of his paperless office and told them how, with electronic medical records, he feels like he’s on medicine’s cutting edge despite working in a rural community.

Second-year students Patrick Hawkins and Murray Baker will join the rural health track in Marianna this summer at the start of their third year. In the meantime, Hawkins is planning to spend his spring break doing an “immersion experience,’’ in which he will stay at Jackson Hospital, shadow physicians, get to know the community and give a presentation about the FSU College of Medicine to students at Chipola Junior College.

Third-year medical student Josef Plum, the first to pursue the rural track, has been in Marianna since last summer rotating with local physicians. Plum is attending medical school on scholarship from Doctors' Memorial Hospital in Perry, his hometown, and plans to practice there after residency.

Boland’s efforts to help expand and bring new ideas to the rural health track will take him to Minnesota in late March. He’ll be visiting the University of Minnesota’s Rural Physician Associate Program on a faculty enhancement grant from the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine.

Minnesota’s program, established in 1971, is widely regarded as the best of its kind. More than 1,000 third-year medical students have studied in the nine-week program and two of every three have gone on to practice medicine in rural locations, with 80-percent of those specializing in primary care.

“I’ll be spending two weeks observing their program with an opportunity to bring back ideas that will help enhance what we are trying to do here,’’ Boland said.