KU School of Medicine-Wichita

10 "Every clinical diagnosis, except the most trivial and transient, should include an appropriate assessment of the patient's personality," Stephens wrote in 1974. "The wise physician knows that it is not enough to determine what condition the patient has, but also what patient has the condition." Kellerman, chair of the Department of Family & Community Medicine, did residency in Wichita from 1978–1981. He admits not knowing much about Stephens' impact at first, but his appreciation grew when he recognized Stephens' national role. "As I started getting into the history about Gayle and his contributions, I realized he was not just a local educator but a national innovator," said Kellerman, noting Ned Burket, a Kingman doctor, played a parallel role in family medicine's development as president of the American Academy of Family Physicians. "They worked simultaneously to transform general practice into family practice. So, Kansas was really in the middle of this change. And that set our state, and Wichita in particular, apart in terms of the history and what we've built since then." "Family Medicine" by John Geyman, M.D., who had observed the program. Like other Wichita residencies — such as anesthesiology and internal medicine — Wesley family medicine predated the medical school. But those programs would soon come under KUSM-Wichita's sponsorship and remain an essential part of its mission. With the campus' focus on primary care, Stephens became KUSM-W's first faculty member and family practice department head in 1972. When he came aboard, Dean Cramer Reed couldn't provide a job description, an indication there was much to develop. "Gayle was a big help in getting the medical student curriculum in line with what other places were doing in family practice at that particular time," Reed told Rick Kellerman, M.D., in 1994. Stephens left the next year for Alabama and the opportunity to start a community medical school, but the tenets he espoused — three years of residency, an emphasis on studying behavioral aspects in patients, clinical training in the community — became the basis for family medicine residency nationwide. G. Gayle Stephens First Family Medicine Residency Director To say G. Gayle Stephens, M.D., founder and first director of Family Medicine Residency at Wesley Medical Center, wrote the book on family medicine is no overstatement. The American Academy of Family Physicians called his "The Intellectual Basis of Family Practice," published in 1982, "one of the most influential works" about the field. The drive to create a new kind of doctor, a "family physician," in the 1960s came amid increased specialization in medicine and a shortage of primary care doctors to provide the comprehensive care patients needed and wanted. Stephens' pioneering work began in Wichita, where he was in private practice from 1955 to 1967. That year, he moved to Wesley and started one of the first residency programs in family medicine in the country, a field he thought and wrote deeply about throughout his career. "The new family practice residency was one of the leading programs in the country," according to a 2011 story in First medical school branch outside of Kansas City. Early adopter of the community model, where students learn alongside practicing physicians — volunteers — in clinics and hospitals. Present on the ground floor as family medicine became a specialty. KU School of Medicine-Wichita, created to meet Kansas' need for primary care physicians, has certainly been involved in many innovations over five decades. Three "firsts" — a first family medicine residency program director, a first department chair and a graduate of the first class — provide a snapshot of those early days of building a school and a program. Wichita and KUSM - W had their share of firsts

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