28
COM Outlook . Winter 2014
jor authors of the 1988 Tort Reform
and Malpractice Act.
Leaving the legislature in 1994, Dr.
Thomas sought to follow the advice
of his cardiologist and surgeon, who
both suggested he find less stressful
work after he suffered a heart attack
and underwent bypass surgery. In a
roundabout way, it was his son, Brett,
who helped Dr. Thomas choose the
next productive chapter in his life.
When Brett decided to drop out
of school, Dr. Thomas required him
to get a job. In order to encourage his
son by setting a positive example, Dr.
Thomas and his wife “quietly decided
we would go back to school,” he
explained. “I went to Stetson Univer-
sity Law School and my wife went to
Eckerd College. When we sat around
the dinner table, everyone except Brett
was in school. We all talked about
what we did and learned in school,
and in about six months, Brett went
back to school. Today, he has a mas-
ter’s in Fine Arts degree.”
What continues to drive Dr.
Thomas after all these years is the
pursuit of learning. “I think educa-
tion is very important, and finding
the opportunity to learn new things
is incredibly stimulating and worth-
while,” said Dr. Thomas, who re-
cently earned his Ed.D. degree from
NSU’s Abraham S. Fischler School of
Education. “I kind of define myself in
my own mind—and sometimes out
loud—as a student. I’m an educator.
I’m an administrator. But basically,
I’m a student.”
The Road to NSU-COM
As the years progressed, Dr.
Thomas’ endeavors and experiences
kept evolving as he took a job with the
Florida Department of Corrections,
hoping that being the medical execu-
tive director based at Zephyrhills Cor-
rectional Institution would offer what
he thought would be an “out-of-the-
way, less-stressful environment.”
Needless to say, that wasn’t exactly
the case. Within his first few weeks at
the correctional facility, Dr. Thomas
examined an inmate who had a sei-
zure disorder. After chatting with the
inmate, Dr. Thomas decided to change
his medications. Interestingly, while
he conducted the examination, the
nurses and correctional officers con-
tinually passed by, poking their heads
in the door periodically.
After the inmate left to pick up his
new medication, the nurses and correc-
tional officers explained why they had
kept such a close watch on Dr. Thomas.
“That is Phillips, and you changed his
meds,” they said in a concerned man-
ner. Dr. Thomas nodded in agreement
and said, “Yeah, they needed to be
changed to control his seizures.”
Dr. Thomas’ colleagues then
revealed why they had kept peeking
into the office. “When Phillips’ mother
changed his meds, he decapitated
her.” Nonplussed, Dr. Thomas calmly
replied, “Well, he was fine with it
because I explained it to him.”
As this stage of his career pro-
gressed, so did the positions he held,
and he eventually became deputy
secretary and then director of health
services of the Florida Department of
Corrections. These diversified leader-
ship positions also served to enhance
his vision of teaching and research
and offered “Every single thing a
medical school did, except accredita-
tion,” explained Dr. Thomas of the
medical students from the University
of Miami and NSU-COM who did
their correctional medicine rotations
under his tutelage.
“After about a year, I called the
University of Miami and told the ad-
ministrators not to send me their stu-
dents anymore because the ones from
NSU-COM were head and shoul-
ders above the Miami students,” he
admitted. “NSU-COM students were
interested, aggressive, and showed up
knowing there was a lot to learn.”
His training programs were a cata-
lyst in his coming to NSU-COM, as
was his attendance at strategic plan-
ning meetings with Dr. Anthony J.
Silvagni, NSU-COM’s dean. In 2003,
Dr. Thomas joined the college on a
full-time basis as chair of the Depart-
ment of Surgery.
With all the expertise Dr. Thomas
shares with colleagues and students
as a leader in improving procedures
and serving on academic and com-
munity groups, his crowning accom-
plishment is the medical specialty
in correctional medicine he created
at NSU-COM. “I couldn’t have done
it without Dr. Silvagni,” he said. “I
am very proud that we created an
entirely new medical specialty for the
D.O. and M.D. worlds.”
Working in collaboration with the
Florida Department of Corrections,
Dr. Thomas developed the correc-
tional medicine specialty, which is a
major milestone when you consider
the last medical specialty to be estab-
lished was emergency medicine in
1976. As a result, NSU-COM became
the first medical school in the country
to gain such recognition when the
standards developed by the college
for this distinct specialty were ap-
proved in January 2013 by the Ameri-
can Osteopathic Association.
Although he’s achieved a great
deal in his life, Dr. Thomas contin-
ues to strive for more. Enlaced with
all this success, however, are a droll
sense of humor and an unmistakable
sense of humility. “As you can tell
from my career, I do a lot of different
things—I can’t keep a job,” he joked.
For the time being, though, Dr.
Thomas appears content. “I am very,
very happy here at NSU-COM and
have not given any thought to moving
on or looking for something else,” he
explained. “I truly enjoy the collegial-
ity here, which you don’t get at other
medical schools. NSU-COM is an
incredibly collaborative and collegial
institution that gives nontraditional
people an opportunity. Because of our
vetting process, I know we have taken
some people that wouldn’t get into
medical school anywhere else—and
they make wonderful doctors.”
