New emergency medicine residency aims to keep doctors in Kansas

Wichita has long had the key pieces necessary to train emergency room doctors: Level 1 trauma centers, plenty of patients, willing physician-educators and an institutional sponsor in the University of Kansas School of Medicine-Wichita. What it lacked was an Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education-certified residency program. That will change in the summer of 2026 when the first class of six residents arrives to begin training at Wesley Medical Center and officially launch an emergency medicine residency program.

“It’s clear there is a significant community need for more emergency medicine physicians across Kansas,” said Sarah Terez Malka, M.D., interim director of the new program. “There's no residency between Kansas City and Denver. We have a huge zone that is not producing emergency medicine-boarded physicians.”

ER doctors, like many specialists, are difficult to recruit to Wichita and rural locations if they lack ties or exposure to the area. Until now, KU School of Medicine-Wichita graduates interested in a residency in emergency medicine had to go — and possibly stay — elsewhere.

“Graduate medical education training programs are one of the best recruitment mechanisms a community can have,” said Turi McNamee, M.D., associate dean for graduate medical education at KU School of Medicine-Wichita. “Physicians who do both their medical education and residencies in one location are quite a bit more likely to stay there.”

The program reflects the medical school’s mission of training doctors to care for Kansans.

“Residency programs benefit their communities by fostering an environment that rigorously maintains up-to-date, evidence-based practices both for high-quality patient care and training the best possible future physicians,” said Laura Tatpati, M.D., dean of KU School of Medicine-Wichita. “As a tertiary care referral center, Wichita is uniquely positioned to create a sustainable pipeline for emergency care physicians prepared to practice throughout the state.”

“We anticipate a certain percentage of our graduates will stay here, and we will essentially be training our own partners,” said Chris Cassidy, M.D., volunteer clinical assistant professor in pediatrics and medical director of Wesley Medical Center’s ERs. “We expect that some of our trainees will come from rural communities and ultimately return to practice near their hometowns. Having trained within our system, they will be well equipped to care for patients across the state and will understand the capabilities and limitations of local hospitals, as well as the tertiary centers to which they refer patients."

Seeing a need and an educational pipeline

Cassidy, a Wichita native and graduate of KU School of Medicine-Wichita and its internal medicine/pediatrics (med/peds) residency, said the movement to start a residency began several years ago with basic questions:

• Why did Wichita have difficulty attracting doctors to emergency medicine when surgical, OB-GYN and orthopedics practices didn’t?
• Why wasn’t there an emergency medicine residency when surgery, OB-GYN, orthopedics, family medicine, internal medicine, pediatrics, med-peds, radiology and psychiatry had one?

HCA CarePoint committed to setting up the program, as did Wesley, and worked with the Wichita Center for Graduate Medical Education and KU School of Medicine-Wichita to organize it. A key step was determining whether Wesley could re-allot unused residency spots from other HCA facilities around the country to the program.

Getting the program approved and rolling

Once Terez Malka agreed to serve as interim director, two years of planning, applications and a site visit occurred before getting approval last August. The new residency operates under the school’s Department of Internal Medicine, which already oversees two residencies (internal medicine and med/peds) and a gastroenterology fellowship program, which graduated its first two residents in summer 2025. In addition, emergency medicine residents will rotate in internal medicine subspecialties.

“These experiences made our department a good fit for a start-up residency program,” said William Salyers, M.D., professor and chair of the Department of Internal Medicine.

The department provides administrative support for the residency, helping to train its administrator, Heather Bills, and assisting with accreditation, faculty onboarding and recruitment. They are supporting a team that’s a work in process. Many current ER doctors serve as volunteer faculty, and a group of core faculty is being identified. Trauma and ICU specialists and a pharmacist have been enlisted as well.

Associate program director Alaa Aldalati, M.D., a Wesley colleague, is a key team member.

“Dr. Aldalati’s passion is graduate medical education and adult learning theory and simulation as a learning tool,” Terez Malka said. “She’s a perfect person to help build an exciting modern residency.”

What the residency will look like

Getting a program running and residents in hand within a year is no simple task. Terez Malka committed to reading every application — about 350 — and interviewing as many applicants as possible. Interviews began in October and will run into February, with up to 140 applicants. March brings Match Day and the first class of residents.

The Wesley ER can accommodate additional physicians and has space set aside for other programs’ rotating residents. Room has been identified for didactics sessions, and while they are working on setting up their own simulation space at Wesley, they can use KU School of Medicine’s simulation center.

“Wesley has a long and great academic history and sharing clinic knowledge is definitely built into the culture,” Terez Malka said. “It feels like an amazing place to provide a high-quality educational experience in a warm, family-oriented, collegial setting. That’s the type of residency program I want to create.”