Jennifer Reed, MD: Hi, my name is Jennifer Reed. I'm an Internal Medicine Physician who practices, in La Harpe, Illinois through Memorial in Carthage. And I practice at a clinic here in La Harpe and then also practice at a couple area nursing homes and assisted livings as well. I am originally from Peoria, Peoria, Illinois. And I met my husband at Bradley University in Peoria when we were biology undergrads. We ended up going through med school together at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine. And then thankfully got into the same residency program at Indiana University where I, I did internal medicine and he did emergency medicine.

 And finally we ended up here, back in his home area. He's from Henderson County, Illinois. And so we live nearby and ended up starting at Memorial about two and a half years ago now.

 So my uncle is an internal medicine physician and he is just one of my heroes, in life generally. He's a phenomenal physician and he kind of got me interested in medicine originally. He works, down in Haiti, doing a lot of mission trips and has an organization that brings kids up to the United States for surgeries and things. So that's where my initial interest came. And my mom is retired neuro ICU nurse. And you know, so originally that's kind of how I got interested in medicine. And, I thought initially that I was going to be more interested in like the urgent care emergency side of things, but I found that, truly my, my interest is more in sitting down and talking to patients, getting to know them, and you know, managing the whole person rather than just like an acute thing. So I ended up, kind of going with internal medicine. I think for two main reasons. Number one, I, really like working with older people so I kind of wanted to gear more towards the older patient population.

And then number two, I love the diagnostic side of medicine, like trying to figure out what's going on with someone. And I feel like you can do a lot of that in the kind of like primary care setting where you're, you know, you just have a undifferentiated patient in front of you and you can start from ground zero for a lot of them.

 I, I try to help guide people through the medical system, which is, can be really, really difficult even when you know the ins and outs of it. But I try to do that on their terms. So, you know, I, I like to lay out options for them and make sure they know of all the resources available to them so that, they can get a full range of what their options are, and then they can kind of guide, you know, what decision they want to make.

So if somebody, has a specific medical condition, you know, I like to lay out like, okay, here's, here's what would be recommended. And then based on their goals of care and, and where they're at in life and, and all of that, you know, family preference, et cetera; just kind of try to help them through the system in the way that kind of meets their, their needs and best fits their life.

 I think that's the, the biggest thing for me is, kind of living in the community that I work in, which can be hard at times, you know, for certain reasons. But, at the same time, it's the most fulfilling thing, I could ever imagine. It's truly been an honor to practice in my own community and honestly, that's the best part of my job is just knowing the people that I try to help. But, Memorial itself, I was really interested initially right off the bat when I talked to Ada Bear our CEO the first time.

She's just like an extremely, honestly an amazing person. And drew me into the culture at Memorial, which I feel like is, really incredible to look at the hospital system and what they offer for how small Carthage is. But, I think just seeing like Ada's desire to pull in different subspecialists and, and things like that. I mean, I feel like they offer a really good range of subspecialties for, patients to go to through Memorial. And, I just feel like they are very geared toward making sure that  the provider gets to practice in a way that helps them feel fulfilled.

 So my husband and I have a five-year-old son, who's awesome. His name is Lindon. So a lot of our activities are kind of geared around him right now. But certainly being you know, living out in the country, we, we love to go four-wheeling and hiking. One of my favorite pastimes from even as a child was rock climbing. And obviously out in the cornfield here, we don't have a whole lot of rocks to climb, but any sort of outdoor activity, hiking and I set up a basketball hoop for my son and so, you know, just trying to, to get outside during the warm weather.

And, and then also I, I'm an extreme nerd and I, I really enjoy reading, and studying still, which is, I, I think of benefit in this career path that I chose, but I, I just love reading like medical cases, like every week when the New England Journal comes, it's like the best day of the week and, you know, so kind of a mixture between outdoor activities and then still liking to try to keep up on new stuff out there.