Issue link: https://kusm-wichita.uberflip.com/i/1545861
To address the dire shortage of doctors in Kansas, KU School of Medicine-Wichita has created new fellowship programs, increased resident numbers in two programs and is considering additional graduate medical training programs. It's a strategy that seems to work, according to a 2024 report by the Association of American Medical Colleges. The report looked at how many residents who completed training between 2014 and 2023 established a practice in the state where they trained. Kansas' resident retention rate for those 10 years was 55%. The KUSM-Wichita retention rate is much higher at 76% for those who completed the terminal portion of their graduate medical education there, according to school administrators. "If you think of the shortages in the United States, a lot of it has to with where (doctors) are doing their residency training, and most residency training is concentrated in large urban centers right now, but that doesn't get physicians where they are needed most," said Turi McNamee, M.D., who became the associate director for graduate medical education at the Wichita campus in mid-2025. In Kansas, 70 of the state's 105 counties — or two-thirds — lack enough primary care physicians to serve their population, according to recent statistics from the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration. In the past four years, KUSM-Wichita has started three new fellowship programs and expanded two residency programs. Two of the three new fellowship programs — in child and adolescent psychiatry and in Caring for Kansas by expanding graduate medical programs 14