Service Runs in Families

Photography by James Moore

Ozarks Healthcare thrives on the strong familial connections within its staff. Many employees are siblings or part of multiple generations working together, reflecting the health system’s deep roots and commitment to quality patient care. Here, a few family members share their experiences and the significance of working alongside loved ones at Ozarks Healthcare.

Something that makes Ozarks Healthcare a close-knit work community is the many family members who report here to work every day. These relationships — be they siblings or multiple generations — speak to the deep roots the health system has in the community and its reputation for patient-centered service and quality care for all. Below are just a few of those family members who shared what brought them to Ozarks Healthcare, what keeps them here and most importantly, what having a close family member on the team means to them.

Elizabeth Bowen & Catherine Walters
Nursing

A quick chat with Elizabeth Bowen and Catherine Walters reveals much about the relationship the two sisters share, both with each other and their chosen field of nursing. 

Both have racked up tenure with Ozarks Healthcare in excess of a decade each, yet both came to their profession late. After serving in various other roles, Catherine has been a nurse for 18 months and Elizabeth has been a nurse for 2 ½ years. 

“I started as an office assistant in heart care services, and I did that for a long time,” Catherine said. “I watched the nurses who worked there, and I told myself, ‘I can do that,’ and I went to nursing school.”

But in other ways, the two medical professionals are very different. Elizabeth, who spent the first part of her career in sports medicine and athletic training, now works as a clinical supervisor in the emergency department where she said she thrives on the adrenaline of the moment and the ever-changing workload. Catherine works in the cardiac step-down unit where she excels working in a comparatively stable environment. 

“I am 100% aware that I would not want her job, and I don’t think she would want mine,” Elizabeth said. “I never say never, but at this point, I have no desire to work on a floor unit, and I’m pretty sure Catherine would say the same thing about working in the ER.”

Each woman is the other’s primary cheerleader, something that goes back to their nursing school days. Elizabeth, having completed her studies first, recognized what elements of nursing school were likely to overwhelm Catherine at first.

“My sister, I love her to pieces, but she has a tendency to be a little anxious sometimes,” Elizabeth said. “I just kept telling her, ‘You’re gonna be fine, you’re gonna be fine.’”

Catherine, for her part, took heed of her younger sister’s coaching and excelled in nursing school, which validated her decision to follow it as a profession. As the mother of a child with a heart condition, she spends every day on a mission to help others.

“I love the heart,” she said. “And to me, there is nothing better than pushing a heart medication through an IV and seeing it work on the telemetry.”

Aside from the playful sibling rivalry over who’s the better nurse, the two play an important role in each other’s lives. When one or the other has a bad day, they have someone they can talk to who understands them in a way no one outside of health care can. 

“I rely on Beth a lot when I get stressed or when something bad happens,” Catherine said. “She helps me get through it.”

“As a younger sibling, you just rely on your older sister sometimes to listen to you vent,” Catherine added. “She’s very good about telling me, ‘You’re going to work through this, and you’re going to be OK.’”

Brittany Simers & Jacob Simers
Marketing/Emergency Department

When Brittany Simers landed at Ozark Healthcare, it came as a big surprise to people who knew her and to Simers herself. Working in the health care environment wasn’t something she’d envisioned while pursuing a degree in public relations. 

Now, however, she’s found a home in the Ozarks Healthcare marketing department, and that feeling of connection only deepened when her younger brother, Jacob, joined the company — not to mention a professional awakening on how to leverage her creative skills in service to others.

“My family has always had that public service part to them, and growing up, I just wasn’t sure I fit in with that,” said Brittany. “This job has helped me not just connect with Jacob more but helped me realize I really am passionate about helping people through my job. It just looks a little bit different than other roles.”

Jacob brought varied work experiences with him from working as an EMT to being on the Ozarks Healthcare security team before settling into his role in the emergency department. His job experiences give his sister a good sounding board for stories she’s working on to help publicize the hospital. 

“If somebody’s talking to her about something, maybe it’s something new that we have that they’re trying to promote or something like that, she can ask me a lot of things to see if I know anything about it,” he said. “If she’s doing a story on somebody in another department, she’ll come to me and ask if I know them or if I’ve worked with them.”

For Brittany, the opportunity to lean on one another has helped strengthen the sibling bonds between them.

“I would say we both, to an extent, have to not necessarily bury or push aside emotions, because I think our emotions help us do our job well, but we have to know how to carry them and do our job at the same time,” she said. 

“That’s something, especially as he has started working in the emergency department, I’ve been able to see him do very well. But there have also been times he’s come off a shift, and he’s told me that he’s had to step outside. I definitely have witnessed him getting more emotional than I’ve ever seen him be before. That’s what makes him so good at his job, and we’re able to talk and discuss those things.”

Jacob agreed, saying having his sister nearby is good for sharing what goes on in any given day.

“When something goes wrong, or even if it’s a good day and you need to share something — maybe it’s the smallest thing in the world but it made you happy — it might not mean a whole lot to somebody else, but you know you can share it,” he said. “It’s always good to have someone that you can go to, somebody that you can connect with easily. She’s always there for me to talk about anything. There’s nothing else like family.”

Beth Reeves & Josh Reeves 
Nursing/Development

Beth and Josh Reeves could’ve gone anywhere to build their careers, yet they chose Ozarks Healthcare thanks to a shared desire to serve and a common love for their community.

“This is our home,” said Beth, a nurse who recently left the ICU for a role in document integrity. “Our dad lives in the same town as us now, our sister’s not very far away, our kids go to school here. We’re able to take care of our community members. I know there have been opportunities for me to leave for more money, but it’s more about being able to take care of our community. That’s the biggest thing for me. I have a five-minute commute, and I’m going to know who I’m working with and who I’m taking care of, which are people who used to take care of me.”

“Healthcare is very complex, and it’s sometimes very hard for people to access,” said Josh, vice president of development. “There is this reward we have for truly taking care of people that we know and get to know. You definitely wouldn’t get that with health care in another community. I don’t even know if you have that same sense of helping other people in other rural communities that you get working here.”

The siblings push each other to be better as well as serve as a resource for the other from within their own circles of influence. 

“In my line of work, you have to have the patient story before you can figure out what you need to improve or go out and get,” Josh said. “To have knowledge of what the patients need, to me, is pretty unique. Beth is my ace in the hole because she can provide that firsthand understanding. It really helps, a lot of times, to have a sounding board with somebody telling you something should or shouldn’t be a priority because this is the way things really are.”

For her part, Beth has been inspired by her brother to continue to further her education over the years from an LPN to an RN to soon completing her bachelor’s degree.

“I graduate from Mizzou in May,” she said proudly. “That was a bucket list thing, to graduate from Mizzou. Josh went to Mizzou, and my sister went to Missouri State University. I’ve already got my MSU degree, so the Mizzou degree is next. I’ve tried to follow both of them.” 

As for the future, the tandem said they want to continue to serve others through their work — Beth through her nurse’s training and Josh by ensuring the funds are available to keep Ozarks on the cutting edge. 

“I don’t have any career aspirations except to do what I’m doing now but better all the time,” Josh said. “For rural healthcare to remain strong going forward, we’ve all got to do things a little bit better every single day. That’s the only way we’re going to make this work.”