Cofrin Logan Center Clinical Director reflects on KU Medical Center career

What is the main reason you have stayed at KU Medical Center?  

Throughout my career, I have had numerous opportunities to visit and observe the inner workings of many similar institutions, and I have never experienced a single one that topped KU Medical Center. We are living proof that an academic medical center can achieve extraordinary clinical, academic and competitive research goals, while also providing a safe, supportive, nurturing interpersonal environment. 

In one sentence, describe your time at KU Medical Center. 

KU Medical Center, and especially the Department of Family Medicine, have provided me with all I have ever needed to fulfill my lifetime clinical, teaching and scholarly career goals. 

What is your favorite memory at the medical center? 

My favorite memories have all involved witnessing the faces of worried, tentative patients be transformed into hopeful, trusting faces as they realize they matter to each and every one of us who provide care to them. 

What other memories would you like to share from your time here? 

When I arrived at the KU Medical Center campus as a first-year faculty member almost 40 years ago, we existed in a small, visibly aging complex that needed a whole lot of love and support from the community to get back on its feet.

In those days, we were so small that I had the very corner office on the first floor of Bell hospital in the Family Medicine Clinic, facing Cambridge Street. Just beyond the large glass windows of my corner office, the visual landscape consisted of 39th Street, the Energy Center, parking garage and not much more. 

Just beyond the energy center was the infamous Jimmy's Jigger tavern, well-known to us as "J Building." (It wasn't uncommon to hear students and colleagues say, "It's Friday, are you attending the meeting at J Building starting at 5 o'clock?") 

When I was told my time in that big, beautiful corner office was up, I was heartbroken. Little did I know what was ahead. If you had told me then what KU Medical Center was to become, I never would have believed you. 

Appeared in: KU Medical Center Employee Spotlight

Visit Bruce Liese's profile page on the Life Span Institute's website.