Dr. Gretchen Dickson, director of the Wesley Family Medicine Residency program, returned home to Pennsylvania - as she thought she would - after finishing family medicine  residency and fellowship at the University of Missouri-Kansas City in 2009.

But a call from KU School of Medicine-Wichita's Rick Kellerman, whom she'd come to know from involvement in the American Academy of Family Physicians, led her to consider moving far from home and family.

"Rick said, 'Why don't you come to Wichita and see what it's about?''' Dickson recalled. "My whole career had been residents. I hadn't thought about working with medical students full time. I came out and interviewed and got to know the folks in the department and just loved it. I thought, 'Yeah, this is going to be a good thing.'"

Hired to direct the medical school's family medicine clerkship, Dickson was able to do what she loved - teach and practice - and learn and gain experience. Her subsequent move to the Wesley program in 2013 was natural. The timing and challenges were right, she said, as new requirements for family medicine training were coming in.

"It's a program that's really focused on training doctors for Kansas," she said. "They go out into rural Kansas. Even if they stay in Wichita, they serve the community. Who wouldn't want that job?"

Dickson, though initially hesitant to consider Wichita, has embraced the city and its medical students, residents and doctor-educators with the enthusiasm - and contagious rush - she seems to bring to any conversation or topic. When she says, "I like to be busy," Dickson is describing her work and her personality.

"I like being in the hospital, and I like doing inpatient care. I do a lot of OB; I do a lot of maternity care. I do a lot of men's health ... I take care of the prostate disease-type stuff," Dickson said, describing areas of particular interest. "Our training philosophy is I can't ask my residents to do something I'm not willing to do."

Dickson appreciates the history of the Wesley residency, which in the late 1960s was one of the first four family practice programs in the country and the first based in a community hospital.

Dr. Gayle Stevens, a "godfather" of family medicine, began the program. "We believe we have the first family medicine grad in the country, Conrad Osborne," Dickson said. "As residency programs spread across the country, people designed programs based on the Wesley model."

She also appreciates the role Wichita's doctors and medical culture play. "Wichita is a great medical community. We rely on the fact that people volunteer to open up their practices and let students follow them around for eight weeks. People who haven't been outside Wichita don't realize how special that is. We don't have the problem of finding a surgeon or a cardiologist willing to teach. They just do it."

Service is something Dickson preaches to the young doctors at Wesley. "I tell residents they can't just be a doctor in the exam room. That's OK and that's necessary, but it's not sufficient. If you take off your doctor hat and say, 'I cease to care about you outside the exam room,' you're are not living up to what a family doc is supposed to be."

In addition to her administrative role, Dickson conducts research - pediatric ear infections and prostate screening are among the topics - and tries to write "a couple book chapters or articles a year." Quality improvement, getting better at practicing and teaching medicine, is another focus.

"When people ask what I do, I tell them I teach," she said. "I get to watch residents grow up and learn.  When those light bulbs go on, it's a lot of fun. The first time you deliver a baby by yourself, that's cool. The first time you watch one of your patients pass in the hospital, and you're part of making a horrible situation as good as it can be, that's pretty special.

What I love about my job is that I get to be part of those firsts again and again with each class of residents."