Friends and Neighbors: Medicine came naturally for new KHS physicians assistant Jonna Beyer

Medicine and giving a helping hand came naturally for Jonna Beyer.

The Donnelly, Minn., native was just 5 or 6 years old when she was pouring hydrogen peroxide on her father's hands after he came home from work in the autobody field. Beyer recently joined the staff at Kimball Health Services as a certified physicians assistant.

"He used to come home with cuts all over his fingers, and I used to pour hydrogen peroxide on them," she said. "There was something about just helping and healing a person that it doesn't really seem like a job. It definitely makes me feel good at the end of the day. It doesn't seem like a job to me."

Beyer has been in the area since December, and it fits her just fine. Her west central Minnesota hometown has roughly the same population as Dix.

"I love Kimball," she said. "I grew up in a town of 250 people, and so it makes me feel at home in a small community. That is for sure."

Beyer has worked in many areas in the medical field. She was an EMT in high school, and also shadowed many medical professionals from various doctors, physicians assistants, psychologists and more. She also worked in hospice care as a high school senior.

"That was probably, besides working in memory care with geriatrics, my favorite job, just because you get to impact people in the last days of their life," she said. "Some people don't like it, but to be there with someone in their last hours, their last minutes, and like doing it, I think, there's just no better feeling.

"It was self-healing for me. If I wasn't in a position where I was helping people, I felt like something was missing from my life. So it never felt difficult. My mom is a very emotional person. She was like, 'How can you do that?' It's weird, because if I'm not doing something, it feels like something is missing and I don't really feel complete. It's hard to describe."

Geriatric medicine also holds a special place in her heart after seeing what her grandmother went through with dementia and Alzheimer's disease.

"A lot of people don't like geriatric medicine, for various reasons. I really, really like it," she said. "My grandma had dementia and Alzheimer's. It was really hard for me to be there and watch that, but if you're a little bit pulled apart from it, it is very nice to be that provider that you've always wanted for your own family members. I think that's another thing that is also healing for me too."

Beyer did her undergraduate work at Concordia College, which is a private school in Moorhead, Minn. She majored in both psychology and biology at the school. She feels that psychology is something that greatly helps her in the medical field today.

"I think it's important people learn about just to understand what makes up a person that's in front of you," she said. "If you have that base, then you're able to treat people better in medicine, because you understand not only the medical, but the psychosocial aspect of people too, which is sometimes more important than the actual medicine of it. I think psychology has been paramount in success of just being able to relate with people."

The Minnesota native took two years off after her undergraduate work before she entered graduate school to become a physicians assistant. During that two-year break, she worked 70 to 90 hours a week as a nurse's aide, psych tech and resident for memory care.

Beyer completed her physicians assistant degree at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha.

"I thought PA school would be a challenge, but that it would easily be able to be conquered because I was so used to working so hard and being up," Beyer said. "The first semester was a little bit of a shock. That's just to say that in the past, I could always overstudy. In PA school, you read it once and you take a test and you just do how you do. So that was more of an adjustment for me in that there's just so much material. But after that, we started being able to see patients about once every three, four weeks.

"I'm a visual person, so when I was able to tie in my patients with the stuff I was learning in the classroom, once you got past all those base classes where they try to weed you out that first X amount of time, then I loved it. I could say, hey, this is why I'm learning it, I saw someone today, I'm putting it together, and then it was awesome from that time on. The last two semesters were great. I actually miss school. I loved rotations."

Rotations are what first brought her to the area. She criss-crossed the state during rotations learning from different doctors and medical professionals from Sidney to North Platte to Omaha, and even one rotation back home in Minnesota. During that time, she learned many different areas of the field, including cardiology, family practice, pediatrics and more.

Beyer's work in Kimball includes work in the KHS Clinic, in the Kimball County Manor and on call in the emergency room at KHS. The variety is also something she enjoys.

"I think it's important as a new grad coming out of school to dabble in every realm, that way it keeps all of my knowledge fresh," she said. "I really like it. I don't think I'd have it any other way. People always ask, 'Why wouldn't you just want to be in the clinic from 8 to 5 every day?' Well, I really like geriatric medicine, and I really like ER. So yeah, a little bit of everything. Eggs in a lot of different baskets, if you will."

She has also enjoyed the transition back to a more rural area after completing her PA degree in Omaha.

"I'm a pretty simple person, so Omaha was a challenging atmosphere because I had to drive 10 miles and it took me one hour and 30 minutes to get there. Here, I can drive 40 miles and it takes me 40 minutes to get where I'm going and I can look outside and see scenery," Beyer said. "Although it may be flat, it's better than buildings. The peace of mind I get by not going through traffic and just having a relaxing small town atmosphere, it's been a very easy transition."

Beyer enjoys golfing and duck hunting in her down time, and also has a yellow Labrador retriever dog. She also sings and plays the guitar.

She said the biggest difference from here to her home is the lack of lakes.

"That's probably the biggest thing growing up, camping and fishing every weekend. Honestly, that and lack of trees. That's about it, really," she said. "Midwestern culture is great. The people are very similar, except there is less of an accent here than with people in Minnesota."

Beyer has enjoyed the start of her career in the Nebraska panhandle, and said she was very thankful for the warm welcome that everyone has given her.

"It has truly been great so far," she said.