Meet PA Program's New Medical Director

The University of Wisconsin-Madison Physician Assistant Program is pleased to announce the appointment of John W. Beasley, MD, as Medical Director of the PA Program!

As PA Program Medical Director, Dr. Beasley will play a significant role in supporting the program by providing clinical guidance and assuring clinical instruction meets current acceptable practice. Dr. Beasley will also serve as an advocate for the program within the medical and academic communities.

Dr. Beasley has 35 years of experience as a family physician in academic, rural and international health care settings:

• He graduated from Harvard College and went to medical school at the University of Wisconsin.
• He served with his wife, Pen, as physicians in the Peace Corps in Micronesia (Pacific Islands) where they worked extensively with health aids.
• He provided family planning in Louisiana before coming to Wisconsin to complete his family medicine residency.

After residency, he remained on the DFM faculty. Dr. Beasley jokingly shares that this has prompted some patients to ask, "What's wrong with Dr. Beasley that he failed to graduate?"

While on the faculty, Dr. Beasley established a nurse-practitioner run clinic in Tigerton, Wisconsin, where he practiced one day a week. He also developed the UW's Family Medicine Medical Student Program and served, on various occasions, as Residency Director in Madison and Eau Claire.

He was active in maternity care until 2000, and he co-authored, along with Jim Damos, MD, the Advanced Life Support in Obstetrics (ALSO) course that has now reached over 54,000 clinicians in over 25 different countries.

In addition to his Peace Corps experience, Dr. Beasley's international work has included consulting at medical schools in Pakistan, about which he comments that he "is not sure how much use he was to them, but he certainly learned a lot!"

Dr. Beasley has been very active in primary care research:

• He is founder and former Director of the (then) 500-member Wisconsin Research Network and the US Federation of Practice Based Research Networks.
• He currently chairs the International Federation of Primary Care Research Networks which operates under WONCA, the World Organization of Family Doctors.
• He is a grant reviewer and member of the Monitoring Committee of the NHLBI Dental PBRN Project.

His research has resulted in more than 25 publications on issues relating to Primary Care Research Network operations, medical error reduction, quality of professional work life, quality of care, practice complexity and medical education.

Dr. Beasley sees patients three sessions a week at the Verona Clinic and is on staff for Family Medicine residents approximately one session a week at the Verona Clinic and four sessions a week in at the Fox Valley Family Medicine Residency in Appleton.

On the more personal side, John is an active pilot, aviation medical examiner, and aviation author (over 40 articles in lay press). He and his wife, Pen, have two children. Their daughter, Elizabeth, is married and lives with her husband, Omri, in Paris where she works evaluating international poverty reduction projects. Their son, Matthew, lives in Colorado where he works as an astrophysicist designing instrumentation packages for rockets. He and his wife, Heather (who has a Ph.D. in Theater), have given John and Pen one granddaughter, Miranda, who at age two, has not yet decided on a career.