Shands at the University of Florida

Shands at the University of Florida is a teaching hospital at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida and Jacksonville, Florida and is two of many hospitals in the Shands HealthCare system.

History

William A. Shands was a Florida state Senator, elected from the 32nd District in the mid-1940s. He was convinced that the best way to enhance the Gainesville community was to establish a teaching hospital at the University of Florida. There was general agreement that the state needed a teaching hospital, but located in a large city, such as Jacksonville, Miami or Tampa. His dedicated efforts were critical to obtaining state funding for a teaching hospital in Gainesville. The University of Florida Colleges of Medicine and Nursing opened in 1956. Two years later, the UF Teaching Hospital was started, on October 20, 1958. In 1965, it was renamed W. A. Shands Teaching Hospital and Clinics in honor of the man who did so much to make the facility a reality. The institution later became Shands Hospital, part of the Shands HealthCare network.

As part of the University of Florida Health Science Center, the hospital is a 852-bed tertiary care facility with 142 intensive care beds. Shands is a Level I trauma center and a leading organ-transplant center.

The J. Hillis Miller Health Science Center — named for the former University of Florida president—has expanded since 1956 into the most comprehensive academic health center in the Southeast. The...
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