Kyla Terhune, MD, FACS

Dr. Kyla Terhune is the Vice President for Educational Affairs at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and the Associate Dean for Graduate Medical Education and a Professor of Surgery and Anesthesiology at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.  After graduating from medical school at the University of Pennsylvania, she completed her Surgery Residency and Critical Care Fellowship at Vanderbilt, where she stayed on faculty as a general surgeon.  She was the Program Director of the Surgery Residency at Vanderbilt from 2014-2019, and in her spare time still operates and attends in the surgical intensive care unit at the Nashville VA Medical Center, where she also served as Chief of General Surgery from 2016-2019.  She is the 2022-23 President of the Association of Program Directors in Surgery (APDS).

During her surgical residency at VUMC, she completed the Association of Surgical Education (ASE) Surgical Education Research Fellowship (SERF) and attended the Residents as Teachers and Leaders course at the American College of Surgeons (ACS), a course that she now directs. Prior to medical school, she was a high school science teacher and basketball coach.  Dr. Terhune has received teaching awards at the local and national levels. She reads and writes a lot, and still loves to coach and teach.