Shands Jacksonville

Shands Jacksonville is a teaching hospital located in Jacksonville, Florida.

It is the largest of eight hospitals in the Shands healthcare system and functions as the Jacksonville campus for the University of Florida Colleges of Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy and Dentistry.

The hospital serves 19 counties in northeastern Florida as well as several counties in southeastern Georgia. The campus is home to North Florida's Level I trauma center and, in 2006, became home to one of the nation's few proton therapy treatment facilities.

History
Shands Jacksonville was created in 1999 when Gainesville, Fla.-based Shands HealthCare purchased two adjacent medical facilities in Jacksonville - University Medical Center and Methodist Medical Center.

The lineage of the hospital can be traced back to 1870 when Jacksonville's first hospital and Florida's first non-military hospital, Duval Hospital and Asylum, was established at the corner of Jessie and Franklin Streets in downtown Jacksonville. In 1901, the George A. Brewster Hospital and School of Nurse Training, which later became Methodist Medical Center, opened to care for victims of the Great Fire of 1901.

In 1967, Brewster Hospital moved to Jefferson and Eighth Street, the current location of Shands Jacksonville, and reopened as the not-for-profit Methodist Hospital. In 1971, Duval Hospital moved to a 485-bed medical facility across the street from Methodist called University Hospital.

In 1982, University Hospital became a private, not-for-profit facility and contracted with the city of Jacksonville to provide care for the uninsured. In 1983, the hospital opened the first Level I trauma center in Florida. In 1985, UMC was designated an affiliate of the University of Florida and in 1988 was designated the Jacksonville campus for the UF Health Science Center.

In 2006, the University of Florida opened the UF Proton Therapy Institute on the Shands Jacksonville campus.