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The Georgia Baptist Hospital established itself as a premier healthcare facility during the first 50 years of the 20th century. The surgical residency started in the 1940s, became accredited in 1958, and has grown into one of the most respected independent programs in the country. The development and growth of the program was a result of the commitment and dedication of the Program Directors in Surgery over the past 50 years. These key leaders included A. Hamblin Letton, John P. Wilson, Paul Stanton, and George Lucas. The hospital's name has changed to Atlanta Medical Center with the sale of the hospital to Tenet in 1997. The same old school approach to surgical training that characterized the residency when it was known as Georgia Baptist persists and provides outstanding training for future surgeons interested in a broadly based surgical education and experience.
ON THANKSGIVING DAY 1901, Dr. Len Gaston Broughton created a five-bed infirmary as a new program for his church, Tabernacle Baptist, in a rented Atlanta home. Over the next decade, the infirmary grew to 75 beds and in 1913 was sold to the Georgia Baptist Convention and was rechartered as Georgia Baptist Hospital (GBH). The hospital was moved to its current site in 1921, just east of midtown Atlanta. The hospital grew in size and reputation over the next 20 years to become one of the leading healthcare facilities in Atlanta.
In 1940, the first medical school graduates were accepted for postgraduate training at GBH. The most noteworthy of these young physicians was Alva Hamblin Letton (Fig. 1), who started his surgical training at Georgia Baptist. Because few programs were accredited at that time, surgeons seeking American Board of Surgery certification were required to complete apprentice-type work under the direction of a board-certified surgeon. Dr. Letton worked under Dr. T. C. Davidson, a board-certified surgeon, to gain his certification. Dr. Letton went on to become one of the South's most distinguished surgeons operating at GBH for nearly 40 years. He is credited with bringing screening mammography to the South and helped demonstrate the value of early detection of breast cancer.1, 2 In 1971, Dr. Letton became President of the American Cancer Society and was in attendance when Richard Nixon signed the National Cancer...