program here, I really thought it was a pipe dream to begin with,” Weigel stated. “The world of graduate medical education is its own arcane world of rules and regulations, and it’s really relatively complex to put together. And the same kinds of rules and regulations that apply to training internists or family physicians at the University of Kentucky or the University of Louisville or Vanderbilt are all the same. So the kinds of exposure that people who graduate from medical school have to be given in order to become a licensed physician and then a boarded physician are exactly the same.”

“So the idea that we could do that in a rural hospital setting was really almost daunting for me to even consider,” Weigel said. “I just said, ‘Mark, you’ve got to be crazy,’ but I took it. He encouraged me to take a trip with him over to Danville, Virginia, where there was a nephrologist who was the program director at a small program at their hospital, named Mike Moore. He convinced me that I had both the ability and the bent to really do something like this.”

Eleven years later, Dr. Weigel and Dr. Patrick Jenkins have guided the LCRH graduate medical education and sent over 100 new doctors out into the field of medicine, with almost 27 continuing to practice medicine in the local area and many more in the nearby region.

Although Weigel serves as Internal Medicine Program Director and Jenkins serves as the Family Medicine Program Director, both agreed that the success of the program was part of an ongoing effort by many in the LCRH setting.

“If Libbey Crowe and Edrie Jones had not committed at the same time with me to doing this and to becoming essentially the micromanagers of the administrative details that were necessary to get this off the ground,” Weigel stated, “I just wouldn’t have done it, because I operate kind of as a big idea person, and I know broadly how to paint and to begin to put things into motion.

“I will never be able to thank enough all of the people through the years, all of the subspecialists, all of the surgeons, all of the obstetricians, all of the emergency room physicians, all of the radiologists, (and) all of the pathologists, who bent over backwards to really make certain that this transitioned from a rural hospital into a teaching institution,” he added. “Without their help, it just simply wouldn’t have ever happened. So I think it’s fair to say that in the last decade this hospital has transitioned completely, and this medical community has really transitioned completely with both undergraduate and graduate medical education to the point now where our mission is not just to take care of patients, but also to teach people how to take care of patients.”

Even before the graduate medical education program was introduced at LCRH, Dr. Weigel was an integral part of medical student education. Most of the time, a medical student could be found with Dr. Weigel on inpatient rounds and in the outpatient clinic setting.

“I have had students with me working, and some people in graduate medical education working with me, for the first 28 years that I practiced medicine,” Weigel said. “Whether or not it was a nurse practitioner student, or a physician’s assistant student, or a medical student, or somebody who was in training already who was doing a rural rotation, I literally had one of them by my side almost all the time.

And I found that teaching always made me a better physician. People who are questioning all the time why you’re doing what you’re doing and making certain that you’re up to date in what you’re teaching always, I thought, made me a better physician.”

But as astounding as his impact on the medical profession locally and afar is, Dr. Weigel has been just as prolific in his tireless work outside the four walls of Lake Cumberland Regional Hospital.

Weigel was instrumental in helping to establish a Smoke-Free Ordinance in Somerset in 2012. Dr. Weigel was president and founder of Lake Cumberland Runners in 1995 and created the Cumberland Cool Run to help support local high school running programs. The program has expanded to a year-long schedule of races, known as the Lake Cumberland Run/ Walk Series powered by Lake Cumberland Regional Hospital. Ironically, the 27th annual Cool Run race took place on the same day as Weigel’s retirement celebration.

“For 40 years plus, Dr. Weigel has served our community unwaveringly with a sense of commitment to do things the right way,” said LCRH Chief Medical Officer Michael Citak. “Dr. Weigel has worn many hats over the years. He has been an internist, an educator, a leader, a husband, a family man, a grandfather, an athlete, and, of course, a good friend to many of us here. We all know that one of the biggest impacts you’ve left here is the starting of our residency program 11 years ago. And this is a program that doesn’t just create good doctors; it creates exceptional ones.”

One of Dr. Weigel’s most critical contributions was helping to kickstart a campaign to ensure all local schools had an automated external defibrillator (AED) available. Through donations from the community, all local schools in Pulaski County received an AED. The AEDs have helped save lives at Southwestern High School, Northern Elementary, and the Center for Economic Development.

“Dr. Weigel has been more than a physician,” stated LCRH CEO Carolyn Sparks. “He’s been a caregiver in the truest sense, a steady, compassionate presence to his patients. No matter the hour or challenge, his patients have always known they weren’t just receiving medical care. They were being treated by someone who listened, who truly saw them, and who gave his heart to their healing.”

“There have been generations of physicians, students, and residents who walk the halls under his guidance,” Sparks said. “It’s impossible to count how many have been shaped by his wisdom, his patience, and his insistence on doing the right thing. Always. If you trained under Dr. Weigel, you didn’t just learn medicine. You also learned character. Dr. Weigel’s legacy is deep and wide, and has left fingerprints on this hospital, on every life you’ve touched.”

And while Friday’s event was called a “Retirement Celebration,” Weigel referred to it as more of a transition than a retirement. He will transition to an emeritus role in July 2025 and will continue to educate core students from KYCOM and LMU during their third and fourth years of medical school.

“I’ll also continue to practice in the continuity clinic with Dr. Kennedy, who has also been incredibly necessary to the success of this program,” Weigel stated. His work inside the outpatient clinic here, where both internal medicine and family medicine residents work, has been inordinately important, and I’ll continue to work with him a couple of days a week there.

“I think that I’m going to travel a bit more than I have up to this point in time,” Weigel added.

Dr. Weigel admits that he was inspired to pursue a career in the medical profession after spending time with his father, Dr. Gerard Weigel.

“I think that anytime that you’re in a situation where you’re fortunate enough to be born into a family with two thoughtful, professional parents who are doing their job well, that you begin to look up to what they do and what they’ve offered to you and how they’ve been useful to the rest of the people in their society,” Weigel said. “When I looked at my father and my mother, who was a nurse, and looked at what they had done to contribute to people, then it made me think twice about it. And I think a lot of times in situations like that, when you’re growing up and you’re in high school and then in undergraduate school, this was probably the cognitively easiest path for me to take.

“I wasn’t born into anything else,” he added. “My father was kind enough, early on, to really involve all of us in what he did. And I worked in his office when I was in undergraduate school in the summer, and I made rounds with him in the summer. And knowing him gave me inroads to a lot of the other physicians in society or in this community. My dad taught me to truly be good to people, to appreciate what a privilege it is to be able to professionally serve people in the community who need you. One of the really nice things about medicine is that it really exposes you to the entire pantheon of members of society. My dad is an incredibly level person, who really looks at all human beings exactly the same.”

Despite his family’s longstanding involvement in the local area’s medical field, a younger Joseph Weigel once considered becoming a lawyer instead of a doctor. In his junior year of undergraduate school, Weigel took the law school entrance exam as well as the medical school entrance exam. At the time, Weigel thought about being a lawyer before he finally decided to go into medicine.

That choice, made by a young man, changed Dr. Weigel’s life and career path. It also improved healthcare for the local residents and turned a small rural hospital into a hub for medical graduate education.

Contact Steve Cornelius at scornelius@somerset-kentucky. com.