Just about every young physician who moves to a small town like this gets the same question: "Are you going to be here awhile?"

Drs. Dan and Kara Kuhlman believe they will. Now in their second year in this western Kansas town, the KU grads say they're busy with work that's both challenging and meaningful.

"I feel like we're doing something important," Kara Kuhlman said. "I just really enjoy coming to work every day."

The Kuhlmans graduated from the KU School of Medicine's rural track program in Salina.. Because of the program's small size, Dan Kuhlman said, "We were essentially treated like residents, which was great." They completed their residency at KU's Smoky Hill Family Medicine in Salina, then moved to Colby.

Dan is from Kensington, Kansas. His mother works for Hospice Services, Inc., which covers northwest Kansas, so he was familiar with the local medical community. Kara is from Tribune, just over an hour to the southwest, where an early mentor was Dr. Bob Moser, the former secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment who started his practice there. He's currently executive director of the Kansas Heart and Stroke Collaborative.

Kara spent time in Moser's office during high school and realized how versatile a family physician's work could be. "I wanted a variety of things to do every day," she said.

She's got that in Colby, where the Kuhlmans work at Citizens Medical Center hospital and The Family Center for Health Care, an adjacent clinic. Both treat patients of all ages. Kara delivered 19 babies during her first six months there. While she's taking a break from those duties to care for her own young children, she performs gynecologic procedures and minor dermatologic surgeries. Dan focuses on clinic exams and also serves as medical director of two nursing homes.

"We can take care of patients and their grandparents and their baby, and I like that a lot," Dan said.

Under a new arrangement, Dan Kuhlman and several other physicians take turns serving as hospitalists for one week per month. That helps provide more efficient continuity of care for the admitted patients, who average about eight a day.

"It got busy enough that it made sense to do that," Dan said. "The patients love it, the nurses love it."

Colby's size and location hours from the nearest large medical facility mean its physicians have to be prepared for just about anything. In certain emergencies, patients are stabilized before being transported to Denver, Hays, or Kearny, Nebraska. But the region's weather can make that difficult.

Kara recalls delivering a baby who was breathing too fast, then finding that the Denver medical helicopter couldn't take off because of thunderstorms and a tornado. "I just stayed at the hospital that night," she said.

The Kuhlmans say Colby is just the kind of place they want to raise their two children -- Anna, 3, and Scott, 18 months. "It's nice being accepted by the community," Kara said.  The couple recently took a quick weekend getaway to Dallas to celebrate their fifth wedding anniversary.

The Kuhlmans say their patient load has grown by about half. The couple still found time to host a half-dozen KU students doing their rural health rotations last year.

One of Colby's two clinics closed recently; a couple mid-levels from that clinic joined The Family Center, and Dan Kuhlman says the medical community seems less divided than before.

And to help with the workload they helped recruit another married physician couple. Kysha and Dereck Totten, a pair of KU School of Medicine-Wichita grads will start their practice in Colby next month.

"I feel like we're really building up a hub," Dan Kuhlman said.