1996 Annual Report
Steve Johnson, P.A.
When appreciative patients occasionally ask physician assistant Steve Johnson why he hasn't gone to medical school to become a full physician, he has an answer that comes from his heart:
"I made a conscious decision--at my stage in life--to be a husband and stepfather, and to be the best physician assistant I could be for the Foundation and for the patients we care for," he says. "I realized I have a very rich life and career." He also has time to walk or run on the beaches near the Pacifica home he shares with his wife Debra (Infection Control Coordinator at PAMF), their son, Alexander, and their daughter, Risë Michele.
Johnson has received a full share of recognition from patients, physicians and peers for his expertise and compassion in caring for older patients, as well as in general care.
In 1990 he was asked to help design a training program in geriatrics for physician assistants and nurse practitioners at Stanford University School of Medicine--where he taught for several years as a core faculty member. In collaboration with Virginia Fowkes, who heads the Primary Care Associate Program at Stanford (the formal name of the P.A. and N.P. training program), and Gwen Yeo, Ph.D., who heads the Stanford Geriatrics Research and Education Center, Johnson successfully applied for a federal grant to train physician assistants in geriatric medicine.
He also has worked closely with Catherine Hickman at Stanford to develop a "case management" program for frail older persons--an area where there is still much potential to reduce risks and improve the overall health status of frail elders, he notes.
In 1994, Governor Pete Wilson appointed him to the statewide Physician Assistant Examining Committee, where he presently serves as chairman.
Johnson was born in Los Angeles, but moved with his family to "a tiny community, not well-known at the time, called Malibu." Except for the surfboard, "I grew up very much as a typical Southern California boy, with enormously fond memories of many hours wasted laying in the sun and bodysurfing over my teenage years. To this day I have a real attraction to the ocean, and spend as much time as I possibly can looking at it, walking by it or being on it."
He was the youngest of four children. His father, Wayne, was a design engineer with McDonnell Douglas, and his mother, Fern, was a nursery-school teacher.
"I always had an interest in people and process, and--being a child of the '60s and '70s--I developed a strong ethic about participating and `doing something.' There was a strong ethic of being involved with some form of social movement, or health care, or `doing good,' and I think I carried that into my career interests."
Those interests took him to the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he graduated with a B.A. in psychology--and took up scuba diving (a sport he recently resumed). He also worked as an emergency medical technician to help pay for his last half-year in college. After graduation, he worked in a night counseling center along with a professional psychologist, learning "sympathetic listening" and some therapy skills.
But he soon decided that, at 22 years old, he needed more life behind him to be a good psychologist. He pulled back from psychology and trained as a paramedic at Goleta Valley Community Hospital.
After a brief time in Sonora with a friend who wanted to establish a paramedic service, Johnson took a job with Medevac, serving Menlo Park and East Palo Alto from 1974 to 1981. "It was very intense work. I met some good people and I was a good paramedic," he recalls. Then one night at Stanford "one of the Emergency Room docs pulled me aside and said, `You're very capable. Why don't you think of this physician assistant program?'"
The instructor asked why the students wanted to become P.A.s: "I remember very, very clearly wanting to be done with the trauma of emergency medicine--I was tired of death and dying, of auto accidents, of injured children, hopeless circumstances. I really wanted more of a primary relationship, a health care relationship."
After he completed the two-year program, a friend told him that a physician named Walter Bortz was looking for a physician assistant, and Johnson joined PAMF in mid-1983. "I was lucky enough to be selected by Wally, and the first part of my physician assistant career was entirely outside the Clinic going to senior homes and care facilities"--where his caring manner and competence made him popular with patients and increasingly trusted by staff and physicians.
In the past two years, Johnson's work has shifted to seeing patients in the Internal Medicine Department for same-day "urgent" visits. Working under physician supervision and pre-established protocols, he sees a wide range of patients.
He hopes eventually to be able to return part of the time to seeing frail elderly patients. "It's a population I particularly enjoy," he says. "As people grow older they are shunned by society and people. I find that there's a set of skills--listening, sensitivity to such issues as incontinence--that often gives older people great relief, frees them up and allows them to be more functional. I find that very satisfying."