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The former chairwoman of the Kansas University Medical School's family medicine department has resigned her teaching post, citing disgust with a plan to move the department from the Medical Center's Wyandotte County campus to upscale Johnson County.

Jane Murray, chairwoman from 1991 to 1997, most recently worked as an unpaid professor, lecturing and working with resident physicians.

In her Oct. 30 resignation letter, she said that plans to move the department were part of a pattern of "severe disrespect and improper treatment" of the practice of family medicine. Her resignation was effective immediately.

Kansas University Chancellor Robert Hemenway said Murray's letter was "over the top."

"Space problems blow up periodically at the University of Kansas and always get resolved," Hemenway said.

He said Murray read too much into discussions about options to make space available for a new cardiology department at the Medical Center.

"There was an idea to move out to Johnson County," he said. "It was discussed and looked at. Family medicine reacted strongly and negatively, so they started exploring other options."

Murray said plans to move family medicine to Johnson County were well-advanced before they were put on hold.

"I sat in the dean's office on the 27th (of Oct.) and the dean was bemoaning how terrible it was for the hospital to make this move," she said. "These people (KU administrators) lie."

In a statement faxed Monday evening to the Journal-World, Deborah Powell, executive dean of the medical school, wrote: "We are sorry that a faculty member has chosen to resign over some misunderstanding about the future of family medicine at the KU Medical Center."

Powell did not reply to phone messages about the Oct. 27 incident.

Murray said the Johnson County proposal was the last in a series of events leading to her departure from the university.

Among those incidents were:

Dismissal of a faculty member responsible for the placement of resident physicians in rural areas.

Assignment of those duties to a clerical worker.

Failure to find a permanent chairperson for the family medicine department.

Powell and other Med Center officials denied that there were plans to move the department.

"That's a bunch of baloney," said Med Center Executive Vice Chancellor Donald Hagen, when asked by the Journal-World last Thursday if a move was planned.

Hagen made the statement while discussing an agreement to build a new cardiology department around two heart medicine practices that were leaving St. Luke's-Shawnee Mission Health System to operate from the Med Center.

In trying to find space for doctors from Mid-America Cardiology and MidAmerica Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgeons, the KU hospital looked at a variety of options, Hagen said.

But "we won't ever move our family practice," he said. "People heard some rumors. People got nervous."

Hagen said space for the cardiology department would become available as new buildings are constructed for centers on the Kansas City, Kan., campus.

Low-income patients in Wyandotte County rely on KU's family medicine department.

Murray said Belinda Vail, interim co-chairperson of family medicine, described to her a tour Vail was given of family medicine's proposed new quarters in a building at the intersection of Metcalf Avenue and Shawnee Mission Parkway in Overland Park.

Vail did not reply to phone messages left at her office in relation to the incident.

From the time she stepped down as chairwoman in 1997 through August of this year, Murray was a part-time faculty member. Between August and the end of October, she was an unpaid faculty member.

Murray operates her own medical practice in Mission.