Honoring the Life of Dr. John Benson
— John Alexander Benson Jr., MD —
1921 – 2025
When John Benson Jr. was born in 1921, ABIM did not yet exist. Even the concept of board certification and a means by which the profession of medicine could set standards for itself was a relatively young one. Throughout the remainder of the century—and well into the next—Dr. Benson led a distinguished career as a physician, thought leader, medical educator and, from 1975 to 1991, the first President of ABIM.
A graduate of Wesleyan University and Harvard Medical School, Dr. Benson was a young Professor of Medicine at the University of Oregon Medical School (now the Oregon Health & Sciences University) when he first became involved with ABIM in the early 1960s as a member of the Subspecialty Board on Gastroenterology.
“I was thrown in as a very junior person,” said Dr. Benson in an interview with OHSU in 2004, “a year after I’d been certified myself in this subspecialty…I was kind of appalled at what I was seeing in terms of how uneven the process was. No two candidates had the same examiners or the same patients. They each had two patients and two different examiners, so it was hard to set a standard that was uniform across this.”
It was a transformational time for ABIM: the number of board certified physicians and the number of certificates was growing, along with advancements and evolutions in how certification happened. Dr. Benson joined the Board of Directors in 1969, becoming Secretary and joining the Executive Committee in 1972, when the last oral exams were administered and ABIM transitioned to the multiple-choice assessment format.
Later, Dr. Benson noted how his Board service reflected his career path as a medical educator in that it exponentially amplified his ability to make a positive impact on the profession and patient care, “spreading one’s own sense of what’s quality, what’s excellence,” he said.
“It’s a little like making the career decision to teach rather than to practice medicine,” said Dr. Benson. “If you’re in an office and see patients, you see however many patients you see, two or three thousand, over a period of time in a career. If you teach, you have, you know, sixty-five to a hundred students per class. I always had the sense that you multiplied your utility toward patients in general through your students, so you had a greater, broader influence as a teacher.
“When it came to the Board, you multiplied that for internal medicine by all the residencies in the country,” he continued. “You set standards of what good internal medicine should be for all the graduates of the 400-plus residencies in the United States.”
Throughout his long life and career, Dr. Benson exemplified his commitment to upholding a standard—not just of knowledge and skills in his field, but of training the next generation of physicians to meet and advance that standard as well, all on behalf and in the interest of the patients internists cared for.
“John Benson was a pillar of professionalism in the medical community,” said Richard J. Baron, MD, MACP, who retired as President and CEO of ABIM in 2024. “In his long life, he saw and practiced through many ages of medicine. But he was always deeply grounded in humanism and professionalism. He had a deep impact on ABIM and the ABIM Foundation with the values he articulated still guiding us today.”
Furman S. McDonald, MD, MPH, incumbent President and CEO, reflected fondly about his predecessor, particularly his remarkable memory for conversations going back decades. “He was generous with his time and wisdom, always gracious and engaged even later in life,” he recalled.
In 2015, the ABIM Foundation renamed its Professionalism Article Prize in honor of Dr. Benson. Since then, the Foundation has awarded the prize to more than 50 outstanding peer-reviewed journal articles that document the impact of medical professionalism on improving health care. Until the end of his life, Dr. Benson served as a judge for the prize, reviewing articles and participating in discussions about them with the prize committee. This was just one example of how he remained active with ABIM and the ABIM Foundation as President Emeritus. He also joined the annual Foundation Forum each summer through last year, engaging in discussions about trust and professionalism with stakeholders from across health care, from medical students to former colleagues, including the other three living ABIM presidents.
One of them, Christine K. Cassel, MD, (2003 – 2013) considered Dr. Benson “an early mentor, steady advisor and role model. He was principled and smart,” she continued, “but also wise, gentle and open-minded. He encouraged new directions like geriatric medicine and biomedical ethics when both were nascent fields in the U.S. I owe so much to him and will always remember his wonderful smile.”
Dr. Benson will be honored and remembered for his leadership and contributions to advancing the missions of both ABIM and the ABIM Foundation as he is remembered by the many people who knew him as their colleague, teacher, mentor and friend.
