Wichita had the key pieces necessary to train emergency room doctors: Level 1 trauma centers, plenty of patients, willing physician-educators, an institutional sponsor in KU School of Medicine-Wichita. What it lacked was an ACGME-certified residency program. That’s changing this summer when the first class of six residents arrives to begin training at Wesley Medical Center and officially launch a program approved last August.

“It’s clear there is a significant community need for more emergency medicine physicians across Kansas. There's no residency between Kansas City and Denver. We just have a huge zone that is not producing emergency-medicine-boarded physicians,” says Interim Program Director Sarah Terez Malka, M.D., noting many ERs rely on internists, family medicine doctors and costly traveling providers for ER care.

ER doctors, like many specialists, are difficult to recruit to Wichita and rural locations if they lack ties or exposure to the area, as Terez Malka gained when coming from Denver to fill shifts for the practice, CarePoint Health, that staffs Wesley and four dozen other Western-state ERs. Until now, KU School of Medicine-Wichita graduates interested 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,” says Turi McNamee, M.D., associate dean for graduate medical education at KU School of Medicine-Wichita. “Studies show physicians who do their medical school education in a location are more likely to stay there. Physicians who do residencies in a certain location are more likely to stay there. And physicians who do both their medical education and residencies in a location are quite a bit more likely to stay there,” says McNamee, who oversees the Wichita Center for Graduate Medical Education, which has responsibility for residency and fellowship programs.

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,” says 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 at Wesley, and we’ll essentially be training our own partners,” says Chris Cassidy, M.D., volunteer clinical assistant professor in Pediatrics, medical director of Wesley ERs and a CarePoint provider. “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 med-peds residency, says 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? The answer: Those specialties had pipelines built through residency programs.
• 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? The answer: No one knew.

CarePoint committed to setting up the program, as did Wesley, and worked with WCGME and KUSM-Wichita to organize it. A key step was determining that Wesley could re-allot unused residency spots from other HCA facilities — a finite resource — around the country to the program.

Terez Malka soon came aboard. Drawn to medicine after becoming certified as a wilderness medicine EMT while teaching kayaking and leading outdoors trips, she decided to go to medical school in Israel after a year as an EMT on the Gaza border. Returning to the U.S., she did a combined emergency med and pediatrics residency in Indianapolis. She held academic roles while working in North Carolina and completing a wilderness medicine fellowship in Boston.

While based in Denver and working in Wichita, her boss mentioned the possibility of a residency and, noting her academic background, asked if she’d be interested. “It was the fastest yes of my whole life,” she says. “I have always wanted to be a program director because I love the specialty.”

Getting the program approved and rolling

Terez Malka’s easy yes helped kick off two years of planning, applications, a site visit and approval last August. The new residency operates under the medical 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,” says William Salyers, M.D., professor and chair.

The department provides administrative support for the residency, helping train its administrator, Heather Bills, and assisting with accreditation, faculty onboarding and recruitment.

“Dr. Salyers and the whole internal medicine team have just been a fantastic support system,” Terez Malka says.

They’re supporting a team that’s a work in process. Many current ER doctors already serve as volunteer faculty, and a group of core faculty is being identified. Trauma and ICU specialists and a pharmacist have been enlisted.

Associate Program Director Alaa Aldalati, M.D., a Wesley colleague, is a key team member. “She did a simulation fellowship and then a master's in medical education,” Terez Malka says. “Her passion is graduate medical education and adult learning theory and simulation as a learning tool. 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 interviewed by Terez Malka, Aldalati and colleagues. March brings Match Day and the first class.

The Wesley ER can accommodate additional physicians, and the ER already has space set aside for other programs’ rotating residents. Room has been identified for didactics sessions, and they’re working on housing their own simulation space at Wesley and can access KUSM-Wichita’s Simulation Center.

“Our program is very focused on time in the ER, because that's where you get the practice and learn by doing,” Terez Malka says. “First-year residents are going to focus one patient at a time on how to decide what tests to order, if a patient needs to be admitted, if they can go home. During the second year, we’ll focus on multitasking and working efficiently, as well as continuing to gain medical knowledge. And then over third year, it's making that transition to truly taking ownership, moving into the attending role, managing the department’s flow and seeing the bigger picture of how the rest of the department is doing.”

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

“The emergency medicine residency will help build a future base of physicians who are more likely to stay in Wichita or the surrounding areas of Kansas,” Salyers says. “This expansion of locally trained physicians is an important piece in the growth of our local medical community and the support that we provide to the state of Kansas.”

Above, left: Interim Emergency Medicine Residency Program Director Sarah Terez Malka, M.D., left, and Associate Residency Director Alaa Aldalati, M.D., touted the new program at the American College of Emergency Physicians’ convention.

Learn more

Visit the Emergency Medicine Residency Program website to learn more about the program.