April 8, 2026 — For Scott Sellinger, M.D., the path to a national leadership role in urology began in Gainesville, where the University of Florida’s urology service helped turn a medical student with no clear specialty plan into a renowned physician with decades of experience in patient care and medical leadership.

Sellinger started medical school with no real idea what he would eventually want to focus on.

“I’m the first doctor in my family,” Sellinger said. “I didn’t have anybody to give me advice on what might be my best fit as a physician.”

The “light bulb” moment, he recalled, was when he began his urology rotation in his third year of medical school.

“It was the relationships and the people,” he said. “I was able to meet the team and the professors and the residents and it felt like a no-brainer. I knew this was what I wanted to do.”

Sellinger, who is celebrating his 40^th anniversary as a UF medical school graduate this year, earned his MD in 1986 and would go on to complete his residency at the UF Department of Urology — his first-choice program — in 1991.

After residency, Sellinger built his practice in Tallahassee, where he has been a partner at Southeastern Urological Center, now part of Advanced Urology Institute, for 35 years. Throughout the past three decades, he has served in leadership positions in numerous professional societies. He is currently president of the Large Urology Group Practice Association, or LUGPA, which represents more than 2,000 urologists across roughly 140 independent urology groups nationwide.

Over the course of his career, Sellinger has made advocating for patients and the field of urology a central part of his practice.

“I’ve always been interested not only in representing urologists, but in doing whatever I can to make the field better,” he said.

His role as LUGPA president often takes him to Washington, D.C., where he represents not just the organization but also his fellow urologists.

Sellinger said educating congresspeople about the importance of supporting urologists is critical to ensuring the health of his field and, by extension, of his patients.

“If you’re not at the table, you’ll be on the menu,” he said. “That means one of the most important things you can do is show up, and being there and being part of the decision-making process is extremely rewarding. It’s a lot of work, but at the end of the day it boils down to improving patient outcomes and access to care.”

Education has always been important to Sellinger. Early in his medical career, he worked as the medical editor for a local news station in Tallahassee.

“It was a one-man show, but it was fun,” Sellinger said. “I used to put all my own stuff together, do my own interviews, my own editing, everything. But it was ultimately just one more way to educate our local community.”

Among his accomplishments, Sellinger said the highlight of his career has been his work in developing advanced prostate cancer clinics across his large Florida-based group.

“I’m really proud of the work we’ve done in that space,” he said. “We currently have over 1,700 men across our big group who are on advanced therapies for advanced prostate cancer.”

For medical students considering the field, Sellinger’s advice is both practical and optimistic.

“One thing that’s unique about urology is that we take care of everybody; it’s actually a bit of a misconception that we mostly take care of men,” he said. “We take care of men and women, young and old.”

Sellinger also said the need for urologists in America is only growing.

“We’re several thousand urologists short in the United States right now,” he said. “So, urologists kind of get to write their ticket to where they want to go, who they want to work with, what they want to do with their lives and their schedules. It’s an amazing opportunity.”