We’re taking time here at MEDEX Northwest to remember with fondness and gratitude our longtime colleague and friend Tim Evans, MD, Ph.D., FACP, who passed away in Seattle on September 3, 2024 at the age of 77.

Dr. Evans attended the University of Michigan and graduated with degrees from both the Department of Biological Chemistry (PhD, 1976) and the School of Medicine (MD, 1977). After completing his medical residency at Duke University, he relocated to Seattle, WA in 1980 and began work at the University of Washington in a medical laboratory and as a physician. He practiced as a General Internal Medicine doctor with a specialty in Endocrinology. It wasn’t too long before he found his way over to MEDEX Northwest, where he would serve as Medical Director and as a faculty member for the next three decades. 

When speaking at MEDEX graduation ceremonies, Dr. Evans would often introduce himself to the gathered audience of parents and loved ones by saying “Hello, I’m Tim Evans, and I give a lot of lectures.” Which was certainly true. Tim Evans did give a lot of lectures—some 250-300 hours per year in MEDEX classrooms in Seattle, Spokane, Anchorage, Yakima, and Tacoma. It likely was his favorite opening line at graduation because he was proud of it, and because student success and high standards for teaching were always at the core of his professional being.

Which is not to say Tim Evans was above including in his lectures a little bit of what he called “goofiness” from time to time. Okay, quite a bit of goofiness, honestly, and not just from time to time.

“It’s stand-up comedy up there,” Tim regularly confessed, “I’ll spend three hours at the blackboard, drawing my terrible drawings, cracking the same jokes and telling the worst puns year after year.” Of course there was material to cover, he would acknowledge; a lot of quite serious and very difficult material to cover, in fact. “And I do cover it,” he stressed. “But the students will stay awake, remember the material and stay involved if it is all… well, if things are just a little bit goofy.”

And by all accounts it worked. Dr. Evans won a number of teaching awards over his years of service, including three MEDEX Golden Apple Awards, which are voted on and awarded by MEDEX students. In the year 2000, he was recognized In Perpetuity for Excellence in Teaching. And on any given visit to Tim’s MEDEX office, it was hard to miss the seemingly ever-expanding display of toys, plush animals, gag gifts, wry posters, and any number of silly symbolic offerings exhibited across the tops of his filing cabinets, all signifying deep appreciation from his many students over the years for his fearless use of sugar to help the medicine go down.

But as proud of his teaching as Tim Evans was, it’s important to recognize as well his more unsung work in support of the PA profession outside of the classroom. Before retiring in 2021, Dr. Evans served for more than 20 years as Medical Director of MEDEX Northwest. He authored 20 articles in peer-reviewed journals and placed 23 chapters in peer-reviewed textbooks and exam review guides. He served as Chair of the Standards Committee of the Accreditation Review Commission on Education for the Physician Assistant and as Chair of the Board Development Committee of the National Commission on Certification of Physician Assistants.

As one MEDEX colleague put it, “That work reflected Tim’s deep conviction that the long-term success of the PA profession requires both superb classroom teaching and nurturing the professional and academic institutions that shape PA education. While a few thousand MEDEX graduates had the direct benefit of his knowledge and teaching skill, tens of thousands more PAs benefited from his work away from the classroom. He was a dedicated (and fun!) guy who made a big difference.”

“I really respected Tim for the breadth and depth of his knowledge,” writes another MEDEX colleague. “It was phenomenal. He loved medicine and teaching and never lost his sense of wonder.”

At the heart of his regard for and dedication to the PA profession was his oft-stated feeling of respect for his students.

“Year and year after year,” he said, “our students are really terrific. They’re smart, they’re hard working, and they’re here for a reason. I have a great deal of respect for them. They sacrificed a lot. Most of them have homes and families and mortgages, they’ve all been working in jobs and had income, so for two and a half years they have to get by on no income, often leaving their families at home. They’re making some very serious sacrifices. You have to honor that, and I do. I recognize what they are doing and try to give back to them.”

Which takes us full circle back to Graduation Day, the day Dr. Evans frequently identified as his favorite of the year. 

“It is so much fun to have seen these students go through these two and a half years… the advances they’ve made, the strides that they’ve made. They don’t realize it yet how much they know. They don’t know it until they get out there. Of course, you can’t take near as much credit as a parent can. But it’s the same joy that a parent feels when they see their kid finally get to the place where they are experts themselves, when they can fly off and do things that you never could do, and there isn’t anything better than that. There isn’t anything better than seeing these students take flight. I love that day.”

We are all grateful that the flight path of Dr. Tim Evans included extended layovers in Seattle and at UW Medicine and MEDEX Northwest. May he rest in peace.

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Click here for the family’s obituary of Timothy Charles Evans, MD

Many thanks to Tim’s wife (and longtime MEDEX colleague herself) Keren Wick, Eric Larson and Lois Thetford for helping to collect these thoughts.