Physician Spotlight: Dr. Don Howard
Don Howard’s got a new job, a new home, and a new respect for Northeast Arkansas.
Howard, newly finished with his residency at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS), just moved to Jonesboro to join the pulmonology and
critical care team at the Clopton Clinic and St. Bernard’s Medical Center.
Howard said he, his wife Heather, who is a speech pathologist, and their five-year-old daughter Charlotte couldn’t be happier about the move. “We’re all just terribly excited about moving to Jonesboro and getting started,” he said. “This group is by far the best fit for me, and the community is a wonderful, wonderful place to raise a family.”
He wasn’t always so enthusiastic. When Dr. Jeff Cohen of the Clopton Clinic first started calling Howard as a possible recruit, Howard could not have been less interested.
“Honestly, I just flat did not return his calls,” he admits now. “I’d been to Jonesboro a couple of times about 1990 or so, and had zero interest in living up there.”
A friend who knew Cohen finally convinced Howard to give him a call. “My buddy said to me, ‘You really oughta think about calling that guy. I think you’d like him,’” Howard said. “So I broke down and called him one day. I think right from the start, we probably talked about 30 minutes. I walked out of my room when we were done and told my wife, “You know, I have a really good feeling about him.”
Traveling to Jonesboro for the interview gave Howard another shock. The city had grown by leaps and bounds in the 18 years since his last visit. He had remembered a rather dismal small town with few amenities and found instead a flourishing university town full of activity. The hospital was quite technologically advanced, including having what Howard said were “state-of-the-art” healthcare information technology systems. He liked the fact that the tertiary care facility has a full complement of specialties and provides services for the entire Northeast Arkansas and Southeast Missouri area, with over a 500,000 patient draw from 23 counties.
Moreover, the hospital’s and clinic’s spirit of service meshed with his own. “I’ve joined a really solid group. They have good scruples,” Howard said. “We treat anybody and everybody, whether they have insurance or not. The first thing they told me was, ‘If you get a referral, you take it. We’re here to help.’”
He said he and Heather knew after that first visit, Jonesboro was it for them.
Howard was born and raised in South Georgia, in the Jonesboro-sized town of Valdosta. He relocated to Central Arkansas his senior year of high school, graduating from Bryant High before entering the Physical Therapy program at the University of Central Arkansas (UCA). He got his physical therapy degree in 1995 and supported Heather as she finished her graduate degree. “I loved doing physical therapy, but all the while, I knew what I truly wanted to do was medicine,” Howard said.
Once Heather graduated and began her career, Howard decided it was time for medical school. He started in internal medicine, and then decided to specialize in pulmonology and critical care.
“Critical care is actually the aspect of it I like the most. I love being able to help patients with critical needs,” Howard said.
He explained that much of the appeal of the fast-paced field is that each case is, more than in some other specialties, necessarily dependent on the critical-thinking and judgment of its practitioners.
“It’s the field I feel is least likely to become algorithmic,” Howard explained. “You juggle so many patient problems and you have to sit back and make the best clinical decision you can make. I like that. It keeps the art of medicine at the heart of it.”
Likewise, he does not shy away from the painful conversations often necessary with families of the critically ill. “We have a lot of abilities to treat people, a lot of machines and medicines and such,” Howard said. “But there’s a point in critical care where you stop doing things for people and start doing things to people, artificially keeping people alive. That’s a difficult time for families and a very delicate topic in our field. Working with families through that process and helping them move forward to other kinds of healing is very much something I believe in.”
Meanwhile, Howard gives his own lungs plenty of exercise by running a marathon every year and by spending free time singing and playing guitar with local bands and in church. His last band, The Love Pats, was an 80s cover band he played with while in medical school.
Howard soon may be looking for another band to join, but first the Howards are enjoying exploring and getting to know their new hometown. Moonlighting there on weekends for the past few months has only enhanced his initial impressions of Jonesboro.
“As a physician, my first priority is serving the community and providing good medicine,” Howard said. “I already love Jonesboro, and right now we’re building the house I hope my little girl is living in when she graduates high school. I fully intend to retire here. I’ve found the place I need to be, to do my life’s work.”
July 2008
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