Staff Profile - Dennis Johnson
PhD Student
Dennis Johnson
Dennis comes from a long line of fence builders, farmers, plumbers, and salesmen. He hoped to become a country doctor but ended up being a pediatric neurosurgeon. For 20 years he watched children die badly despite the heroic use of technology. Advancing technology had become an end in itself, and the business machine of medicine had become overheated. After 20 years he had done nothing and knew nothing.
With the epiphany that medicine was not about doctors or nurses or social workers or hospital administrators but rather about suffering - the suffering of children, old people, rich people, poor people, and regular people - he chose to do something about those who suffered from chronic, incurable, life-limiting diseases . . . those who die badly. This 'do something' is palliative care and the 'know something' is the PhD program in the Institute of Health Research at Lancaster University in collaboration with the International Observatory on End of Life Care. His doctoral thesis will focus on the care of children with life-limiting disease in the Balkan countries. Their children have suffered amidst recurring cycles of hatred, ethnic conflict, political upheaval, and war as much as any children in the world. Surely we have something to learn from how they are cared for.
Other research interests include the history of welfare, screening tools for futile care, existential suffering, and the culture of forgiveness at the end of life.
The distractions from his day job in palliative medicine at Pennsylvania State Hershey Medical Center are his lovely wife, 3 horses, 3 dogs, 4 granddogs, 4 children, 3 grandchildren, and a fat cat. He loves to ride horses, work on their horse farm in Virginia, and travel with his wife.
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