The Phoenix Integrated Surgical Residency was founded in 1956 by William Kleitsch, MD, and David C. James, MD. At that time, Banner Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center (now Banner &ndash University Medical Center Phoenix) was the largest voluntary hospital in Arizona with over 400 beds. The program was originally approved for residency training of less than three years in preparation for surgical specialties.
This designation was then requested to be extended from only two years to three or four years of training. Foreign graduates and women were accepted into the program, which was not necessarily the norm at that time. Its first residents were from the University of Santo Tomas in the Philippines.
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