In 1982, Ron Ernst, M.D., was hoping to get the chance of a lifetime — to leave his home state of Nebraska for a West Coast surgical residency program.

Turns out he got that chance, but it was much closer to home.

“God works in mysterious ways,” said Ernst recently in a phone interview from Columbus, Nebraska, where he had shadowed the town’s only surgeon as a high school kid and where Ernst established a practice right after completing his five-year residency with the KU School of Medicine-Wichita surgical program in 1987.

The practice, Columbus General Surgery, grew to include two other board-certified surgeons before it merged with Columbus Community Hospital in 2018. Ernst retired three years later, in 2021.

‘The luckiest guy in the world’

At a young age, Ernst decided he wanted a career in medicine. His mom liked to take credit for planting that seed since she had bought him a doctor’s kit as a kid. Shadowing local surgeon Erv Heiser, M.D., starting at 16, solidified that choice.

“That was a neat experience,” Ernst said, recalling that Heiser would call him up on weekends or in the middle of the night when he had a case he thought the teenager would find interesting.

“So, from that time on, I knew I wanted to be a general surgeon, just like Dr. Heiser was, and I wanted to be a general surgeon for Columbus, Nebraska, just like Dr. Heiser was,” said Ernst, who earned his medical degree from the University of Nebraska.

When it came time to apply for residency, Ernst applied to just one program, the one on the West Coast that he thought would give him an opportunity to live outside the Midwest; his “chance of a lifetime,” he called it.

When he didn’t get matched, he quickly needed to find another program where he could interview.

“Wichita hadn’t filled all of its slots, and that was surprising,” Ernst said, referring to the KUSM-Wichita surgical residency program at St. Francis led by George Farha, M.D. Back then, the residency programs at what is now Ascension Via Christi St. Francis and Wesley Medicine operated separately.

Accompanied by his high school sweetheart, Ernst drove to Wichita that day to meet with Farha, current residents and others in the program.

“To be honest, I was even more impressed with the residents there than I was with the residents at the place I had been considering,” Ernst said.

On the trip back, Ann, whom he would marry two weeks later, told him, “You know, the people (in the program) are just like you.”

“Driving down to Wichita, I had been very sad thinking ‘Why didn’t I get picked by the place I wanted to go,’ but coming back, I was saying ‘I’m the luckiest guy in the world.’”

He and his new bride spent their honeymoon looking for an apartment in Wichita.

Lasting results

The residency program in Wichita turned out to have far more advantages for Ernst.

“One of the things I discovered was that if you go to a program that has fellowships, all of the big cases tend to be done by the fellows and residents are trying to fight for those big cases. Being in a program without fellowships, we had much broader exposure and got to work and operate on a lot of complicated cases,” Ernst said.

Farha was “a great mentor,” Ernst said, while “the attendings who worked with the residents were all committed to helping us learn our new profession.

“Dr. Farha was just unbelievable in (showing) how much he truly cared, and the empathy that I could see that he had toward his patients. That really impressed me when I came back here. You know, patients are scared when you're telling them you're going to operate on them, and just that reassurance that you're trained, you know what you're doing, you know how to present yourself to them are things that I observed and tried to emulate in my practice. I learned those types of things in my residency.”

Two doctors in particular would become trusted colleagues that Ernst would call upon to discuss cases when he was the only surgeon in town: Larry Beamer, M.D., who was a resident at the time and later became part of Wichita Surgical Specialists, and Alex Ammar, M.D., who practiced with Farha.

When Farha retired from Wichita Surgical Specialists and KUSM-Wichita in 1998, Ammar became the president and CEO of WSS and professor and chair of the school’s Department of Surgery. Because of both their professional and personal ties, Ernst attended the recent reception that celebrated Ammar’s retirement from KUSM-Wichita.

Ernst added the first partner to his practice in the late 1990s and later was instrumental in opening Columbus Community Hospital’s Wound Ostomy Clinic.

Ernst, Beamer and Ammar also maintained their friendship, often getting together with their wives over the years. Ernst and Beamer, who retired in July 2022, try out different golf resorts during the winter months.

“When I left there, I didn’t truly leave,” Ernst said. “Those ties were made and … I knew I could always call on them.”

Top, left: Ron Ernst’s graduation photo from 1987, when he completed the KU School of Medicine-Wichita surgery residency program. (Courtesy photos)

Above, right: Ron and Ann Ernst

Lower left: Ron Ernst in 1991 when he and his practice initiated the option of laparoscopic surgery in Columbus, Nebraska.