UHD hires family practice doctor
Sarah Day — Staff WriterBLUE EARTH - In one year, a new doctor will come bearing his stethoscope to United Hospital District.
Dr. Aaron Johnson recently was hired as a family practice physician but right now he's in his last year of residency at another facility.
Johnson is finishing up as the chief resident at Mercy Medical Center in Des Moines.
He began his post-secondary education at Northwest Missouri State in Maryville, Mo., continued on at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and finished medical school at St. George's on the Caribbean island of Grenada.
Johnson didn't always want to be a physician. His interest originally was in animal science and agronomy. He wanted to be a veterinarian, and farmed on the side.
"After a few years of doing that, I decided I wanted to go back to school and do something a little different and chose to pursue medicine," he said.
Johnson decided to make the change because it would have been difficult for him and his wife, Jenna, to provide for their seven children in a rural area.
"We knew we wanted to live in a small rural area," he said. "That's hard to do in farming unless it's a real large farm. I enjoy interacting with people and getting to know them, so it seemed like a natural fit."
Family practice and obstetrics are the areas he is most interested in.
"I just enjoy the full scope of medicine," he said. "Seeing babies and seeing people that are elderly, the whole thing. It's more enjoyable for me. I've always lived in small towns where you know your neighbors and know the people you see in the street. Family medicine just goes along with that."
Johnson was watching for job postings in the northern part of the Midwest. His wife is from southern Minnesota. They visited Blue Earth and liked what they saw.
"We liked the size," he said. "We were really impressed with the cleanness of the town, for the size it was. We were really impressed with the schools. And we were quite impressed with the pool, for the size of the town to have that was nice for us."
UHD administrator Jeff Lang said one reason the hospital hired Johnson was because of how well it believes he'll fit into the community.
"He and his wife are from small towns, they prefer an agricultural based community," Lang said.
The other element that impressed Lang was that Johnson is the chief resident in his program.
"That says a lot about the work ethic as well as the quality of his skills," Lang said.
The fit between the practice location, the practice and the practitioner all need to correlate, and Lang believes they do with Johnson.
The state of the job pool is why Johnson was hired so far in advance, Lang said.
"There aren't 40 people that are out there looking for jobs now," he said.
UHD has been in "recruiting mode" since March 2007. Lang said it will be in recruiting mode "until we can fill the needs of the communities we serve."
Lang believes the newest practicing doctor - Kevin Kimm - and Johnson are "examples of the high standards we have on our physician staff."
"In my mind they're 'A' players," he said. "They're top quality."
