Director of New Program Is Eager for First Match Day

“When I was going through college, I was always sort of a back and forth between, ‘Do I want to teach, or do I want to consider going to medical school?’” Gibbs said.

Teaching was the short-term answer, but Gibbs would eventually combine education and medicine. After completing his undergraduate degree in biology at the University of Kansas, he stayed at KU to earn a master’s degree in education.

He moved to Texas when his wife was accepted to a master’s program at Texas A&M. Faced with few openings for middle or high school science teachers in his new community, Gibbs took a job at A&M. He stayed for three years, teaching labs in anatomy, physiology and cell biology.

Gibbs credits Ketan Patel, Ph.D., then an A&M graduate assistant and now a CDC microbiologist, with frequently encouraging him to apply to medical school.

“I don’t want to say it just was a random thing,” Gibbs said, “but had I been teaching science at the middle school or high school level, I wouldn’t have had that encouragement from the (graduate teaching assistant) I worked with.”

Gibbs found volunteering opportunities at two College Station hospitals and enjoyed his experiences in emergency departments and intensive care units. At 29, he went back to school at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and completed his training at the Saint Louis University Family Medicine Residency.

He didn’t stay out of teaching long. Gibbs served as faculty for the Saint Louis University/Scott Air Force Base Family Medicine Residency Program in Belleville, Ill., and he also spent nearly four years as an assistant professor in the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences School of Medicine’s Department of Family Medicine during that same time. He completed his military duties with two years as a staff physician at Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth.

Gibbs continued to teach as a core faculty member at the Methodist-Charlton Family Medicine Residency, and in adjunct roles at the University of Texas Southwestern School of Medicine, Texas A&M College of Medicine, and Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine.

It was at the residency that Gibbs had a pivotal conversation about his career goals with program director Brett Johnson, M.D.

“I said, ‘In my former life, before I was a doctor, I was a teacher,’” Gibbs said. “‘Designing curricula was something I was very interested in. I would be interested in being a program director, helping to design a program, helping to design curriculum.’ Dr. Johnson said, ‘If that’s your interest, then there are some things we need to do to get you there.’”

That included a National Institute for Program Director Development Fellowship and taking on leadership roles in his state chapter and the AAFP, including a seat on the Academy’s Commission on Education.

Gibbs was looking for associate program director and program director roles in 2021 when he learned of a new program in development in Lee’s Summit, Mo., less than an hour from the college campus where he met his wife and a similar distance from her family’s small town.

Gibbs dived into meeting Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education requirements, starting a family medicine clinic and building relationships with community preceptors. The program earned ACGME accreditation just nine months after he was hired but one month after Match Day 2022.

HCA Healthcare and Lee’s Summit Medical Center were eager for the new program to start with the new academic year on July 1, so Gibbs scrambled to find unmatched candidates.

“We had to quickly use as many means as we could find to get the word out,” he said. “We spent two weeks frantically sifting through as many applications as we could, and then in that third week we interviewed about 30 people for six spots. That was our first Match experience.”

This year, the program has had a more typical Match process. Gibbs is chair of the AAFP’s Subcommittee on National Conference Planning, so his program was one of hundreds that exhibited in the event’s residency fair last summer. At least a dozen of the roughly 112 candidates who interviewed with the program in this Match cycle met with program representatives at the conference.

“There were several people who followed through on their interest in the program from National Conference,” Gibbs said of the event, which returns to Kansas City, Mo., July 27-29 and is open for registration. “Our program will certainly be back this year, too.”

Gibbs said that although some students may gravitate to more established programs, there are those eager to put their own stamps on something new.

“There were a few applicants we interviewed this year who started at medical schools that were also new,” he said. “They said, ‘It’s very similar to the way I entered medical school. I was coming into a school that had only been there for one or two years. That worked out really well, so this seems like the next step.’”

Gibbs said the program’s first classes of residents will definitely help shape it.

“What we are doing, like the training tracks we’re developing, is largely based on the interest of our intern class,” he said. “We have a resident who has decided to do women’s health, so we’re developing a women’s health track. As residents develop those interests or decide, ‘These are things I want to explore or do more in,’ then we can take the time and go that route. Another resident of ours is pretty sure she wants to do sports medicine, and she’ll be doing her sports medicine rotation in August. If this is something she really wants to do, then that will be the next track we try to develop and figure out how best to put her on the road to success.”