Sweet

From Page 1 for her. The first two Donna Sweet Medical Excellence Award winners — graduating student Kellie Griffin and third-year resident Chelsea Wuthnow — were announced earlier this month.

Sweet said it means “a lot.”

“I was just flabbergasted that all of my previous trainees put up the kind of money they did to build an award like that.”

The award recognizes academic and clinical merit, plus philanthropy, advocacy and empathy. Sweet’s admirers say she has embodied those last three traits throughout her long association with KU Wichita and the larger community.

Sweet, a professor in the Department of Medicine, grew up poor on a farm near Towanda, earning a full-ride scholarship to Wichita State University. She graduated from KU Wichita in 1979 and joined the faculty four years later. She teaches inpatient care to residents and students at Ascension Via Christi St. Francis, outpatient care to fourth-year students at the clinic and usually has a secondyear resident on a HIV rotation.

“I’m what they call a throwback dinosaur who’s always done inpatient (care) for her outpatients,” she said. “I still care for my patients when they’re in the hospital.” Sweet said she set up her private practice “with the idea that when they needed to be in the hospital, they could be used for teaching purposes in the hospital.”

Sweet was on the front lines of caring for HIV/AIDS patients when that crisis emerged, flying around the state in a small plane to care for rural patients as well as those in Wichita, and is recognized internationally as a specialist in that regard. For years, she and her staff held a Christmas dinner for HIV/AIDS patients at a local church. Each fall, she hosts “A Sweet A’Fair” in her northeast Wichita backyard, raising money to help HIV patients pay medical costs.

She has been a delegate to the American Medical Association and president of the American College of Physicians Board of Regents. In her spare time, she enjoys cooking, travel and golf.

Asked how many physicians she’s trained through the years, Sweet said, “It would take a calculator because I see a different team probably four or five times a year, if not more.”