Issue link: https://kusm-wichita.uberflip.com/i/1372819
17 George Dyck, M.D., first chair of the Department of Psychiatry, used a federal grant to give rural practitioners more extensive mental health training. He hired physicians in communities to organize and train colleagues. "We helped them form working groups with physicians in their communities to address chronic psychiatric problems," Dyck said. Like many KU physicians after him, Dyck took to the road — or the runway — to provide care and continuing education. He fired up his aircraft to visit training program sites and patients in Liberal. "I flew out in the morning and came back in the evening, because there was such a shortage of psychiatrists." Today, many volunteer clinical faculty in Wichita — especially cardiologists, urologists and other specialists — travel regularly to rural communities to see patients, bringing expertise to areas lacking it. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, they, as KU faculty physicians did, embraced telemedicine to ensure patients received care. While many doctors had to learn quickly about telemedicine, students should soon get more systematic training, as assistant professor Tiany Schwasinger-Schmidt, M.D., Ph.D., is developing a formal curriculum on telemedicine for the neurology clerkship. Students will learn how to practice medicine remotely and overcome challenges with technology to provide care. Technology is a valuable tool for a medical school for covering a broad swath of Kansas. Just as beginning medical students in Wichita sometimes learn through lectures originating in Kansas City, KU programs use interactive video to expand their reach. Wichita faculty participate in Project ECHO, a telehealth continuing education program operated from Kansas City. Addiction specialist Daniel Warren, M.D., of the KUSM-W Department of Family & Community Medicine, has taken part in numerous sessions covering opioids, while pediatrician Natalie Sollo, M.D., did one on perinatal behavioral health disorders. TeleECHO is one of the tools KSKidsMAP uses as well. "It's that multiplication factor where you're moving knowledge and not people. We have people from Colby and Kansas City and Hutchinson, Parsons and Wichita, and we are all learning together. We can train your physicians and clinicians to serve their patients in their location," said Polly Freeman, LBSW, MSW, KSKidsMAP social work coordinator. Donna Sweet, M.D., moves her practice to Topeka St. 2002 Doc for a Day starts, giving Kansas high school students the opportunity to experience medical school training for a day. 2001 S. Edwards Dismuke, M.D., MSPH, becomes fifth dean. 2001 The mission handed to KU School of Medicine-Wichita is straightforward: Turn out more doctors for Kansas, especially for rural areas. A key part of that mission, one embraced from the start, is bringing better medical care and resources to Kansans where they live, either directly or by helping educate local physicians and other providers. So today, a program like KSKidsMAP holds twice-monthly virtual sessions of case-based learning to support clinicians as they deliver mental health care to children in their communities. With 99 of 105 counties underserved for mental and behavioral health care, KU psychiatrists, psychologists and others fill the gap. One participant told KSKidsMAP it "fills a long- standing void in pediatric care … as the program helps to manage complicated mental illness in children." KSKidsMAP is part of a continuum of care and support. Back in the 1970s, Natalie Sollo, M.D., Pediatrics Daniel Warren, M.D., Family & Community Medicine