"Nurses Were the Original Mind-Body Experts"

Sandy Johanson has been involved in many of the preparations for this year’s Alumni Reunion as her class celebrates their milestone half century anniversary. As a Columbia Nursing student, Johanson and her class of ‘64, together with the support of Professor Dorothy Reilly, brought the Sigma Theta Tau Nursing Honor Society, Alpha Zeta Chapter to Columbia Nursing.

After graduating from Columbia Nursing, she worked for the Visiting Nurse Service of New York, later managed a family planning clinic at Overlook Hospital, developed Consultation-Liaison Psychiatric Services at Morristown Memorial Hospital, and then became the first PhD director of Nursing Research at Morristown Memorial Hospital.  She has also served as an assistant professor of Nursing at Seton Hall University.  She earned an MA in nursing and a PhD from NYU.  She works in Morristown, NJ as a psychotherapist with a special interest in mind-body issues in the medically ill, women’s reproductive cycle mood disorders, rape, and sexual abuse.

How did your Columbia Nursing education serve you during the course of your long and varied career in health care?

The year I graduated, 1964, was on the edge of the women’s rights movement. Our generation was brought up to be  traditional wives. But our Columbia Nursing professors were clear that as nurses and women, we were equal partners with a valuable, unique contribution to the partnership. “The Feminine Mystique” by Betty Friedan was required reading in our senior seminar.  The faculty made it clear that we were respectful partners, not handmaidens to the doctors. We were expected to speak up during doctor’s bedside rounds and share our observations about the patient. Our role was not just to treat the illness, but to help each achieve maximum wellness.

Required patient observation experiences were part of the on-going Psycho-Social Aspects of Patient Care seminars which we attended in small groups over three years. We took “field notes” of our observations for five minutes in a 12 bed ward. This experience gave me valuable patient assessment skills essential for all those evenings and nights alone trying to keep 22 patients alive and recovering!

Q: Back in the 60s, how did someone with a nursing degree find their way to specializing in psychotherapy? It’s unusual on two counts: as a nurse going into a field that wasn’t focused at the bedside, and also because psychotherapy was still such a new discipline.

I discovered that I wasn’t afraid to work with patients who had mental illness during my first job after graduation working as a visiting nurse in the South Bronx.  I was exposed to many women suffering from postpartum depression. One woman threatened to jump out of her fifth floor window with her baby, it was very serious. Her family rallied around her and my daily visits helped to stabilize her situation.  After that, my supervisor gave me all the psych cases. From 1970-1975 I ran a family planning clinic at Overlook Hospital in New Jersey, where I spent most of my time counseling teenagers about sexuality and pregnancy, which ultimately led to me helping develop the sex education curriculum in public schools. Those two experiences taught me that a person’s physical well-being is intertwined with their psychological health. Nurses were the original mind body experts—they look at the entire patient: How their history, physical health, personality, and family dynamics influence how they cope.

Now I work with cancer patients, women suffering from reproductive cycle mood disorders, the sexually abused, infertility, grief and loss and how these life crises can lead to anxiety and depression.

Q: Your mother and sister both attended Columbia Nursing. How much did that influence your decision to come here?

Columbia Nursing had a huge impact on my mother (’33) and my sister (’66). When my mother got married in the 1930s, she had to give up her job to make room for single nurses who needed jobs  during the Depression. Her time at Columbia Nursing and Presbyterian Hospital remained a major influence and interest in her life. They were an important source of connections for her after she graduated. She went to her reunion every five years until her death at age 86. That’s what motivated me to rally our class together during the last five years to come back for our 50th. I feel so lucky I landed in that class of truly wonderful women.

Q: How does your education as a nurse inform your work as a psychotherapist? How do the skills you honed as a nurse benefit your patients during counseling sessions?

People trust nurses, every year they are rated number one for the most trusted profession. People tend to easily open up to nurses because they sense they are unconditionally committed to helping them.  Part of the healing process for patients is to form a relationship with the person treating them.  I learned how to treat patients respectfully as a Columbia Nursing student—this skill is essential in my work as a therapist. I don’t consider myself a psychotherapist as much as someone who helps people cope and become more resilient.