The University of Kansas School of Medicine is a public medical school located on the University of Kansas Medical Center campuses in Kansas City, Kansas, and also Salina, Kansas, and Wichita, Kansas. The Kansas City campus is co-located with the independent University of Kansas Hospital.
History
KU School of Medicine-Wichita Student-Guided Tour - Four KU School of Medicine-Wichita students offer their insights into life on the Wichita Campus of the KU School of Medicine as well as into living in the city of Wichita.
Medical instruction in the University of Kansas School of Medicine began in the 1880s with instruction in medical topics in the undergraduate school, influenced principally by chemistry professor Edgar Bailey. Medical degrees were not awarded. The idea was more fully developed when professor Samuel Wendell Williston came to Kansas from Yale in 1890 and proposed that a specific two-year course of study for medicine should be implemented at KU. In 1899, Williston was named the first dean of this two-year program at KU.
The official establishment of the school came in 1905, when the KU Board of Regents authorized the creation of a full four-year medical school at KU, accomplished by merging the existing two-year school in Lawrence with three medical colleges in the Kansas City area. The School of Medicine was officially opened on September 6, 1905.
Wichita Campus
University of Kansas School of Medicine elected to open a campus in Wichita in 1971. This campus received third and fourth year medical students for their clinical education and these students serve rotations at the Via Christi Health hospitals, Wesley Medical Center, and the Robert J. Dole VA Medical Center. Since 2011, the KU School of Medicine-Wichita has expanded to a four-year campus, serving students in their didactic and clinical education. There are over 200 students and 75 full-time faculty at the KU School of Medicine-Wichita. The Dean of the Wichita Campus is Garold Minns, M.D. Dean Minns is a 1976 graduate of the KU School of Medicine and completed his residency in Internal Medicine at the KU School of Medicine-Wichita.
With a mission focused on graduating physicians that will help bridge the primary care gap in Kansas, the KU School of Medicine-Wichita ranks first in the nation in percentage of graduates who go to rural areas, second in the nation for graduates who go to Health Personnel Shortage Areas, and sixth in the nation for producing primary care physicians. As part of their dedication to under-served populations, the school partners with the Guadalupe Clinic of the Diocese of Wichita and runs the JayDoc Community Clinic on Wednesday evenings and Saturdays. The JayDoc Community Clinic is staffed by volunteer medical students, residents, and community physicians and sees more than 500 patients each year.
The KU School of Medicine-Wichita also sponsors 13 residency programs in coordination with Via Christi Health and Wesley Medical Center. The residency programs offered by KU School of Medicine-Wichita are:
- Anesthesiology
- Family Medicine (at Smokey Hill, Via Christi Health, and Wesley Medical Center)
- Internal Medicine
- Medicine/Pediatrics
- Obstetrics/Gynecology
- Orthopedic Surgery
- Pediatrics
- Psychiatry
- Radiology
- Sports Medicine
- Surgery (General)
KU School of Medicine-Wichita also operates a multitude of patient care clinics such as Adult Health, Breast Cancer, Endocrinology, Gastroenterology, Internal Medicine, Neurology, Pediatrics, Psychiatry, and Psychology.
In addition to their MD program, the school offers an Office of Research and a Masters in Public Health graduate degree program. The KU-MPH program ranks the sixth best community health graduate degree program in the country by U.S. News & World Report.
Notable alumni
- Jeff Colyer, plastic surgeon and current Governor of Kansas
- Paul Randall Harrington, orthopaedic surgeon
- Theodore K. Lawless, dermatologist and philanthropist
- Kathryn Stephenson, plastic surgeon
- George Tiller, physician
- Milton R. Wolf, physician
References
External links
- Official website
