OZH NEWCOMERS
Back in Town THE BOY IS BY DWAIN HEBDA F
or Dr. Joseph Barnard, there’s nothing quite like the com- forts of home. The family prac- tice physician, who set up shop
at Ozarks Healthcare earlier this year, always knew he wanted to contribute to his hometown even if it took a little while to figure out just how to do it. “My family moved to West Plains when I was about 10 years old,” he said. “I graduated from West Plains High, and for the first couple years, I really didn’t know what I was going to do. For a while there, I thought of maybe going into the FBI, but when I started with general studies in college, I kind of gave up on that idea.” Instead of law enforcement, health-
care beckoned as a way to serve others in the town he loved to call home. He landed a gig at Ozarks Healthcare as a physical therapy tech and switched to Ozarks Technical College where he earned a two-year physical therapy as- sistant degree.
Above: Dr. Joseph Barnard and wife Kista.
Opposite Page: Dr. Joseph Barnard and wife Kista with their children. Photos courtesy of Barnard.
“I worked for the hospital and around some of the other clinics and things in the area for about three years,” he said. “In the meantime, I met my wife. By 2008, I started having the conversation that I wanted to go to medical school. I just wanted to do more. I won’t necessar- ily say I was bored with physical therapy, but I just felt like I was very limited.” Everyone who attends medical school
makes personal sacrifices, and Barnard was no exception. For two years, he’d drive from the family home in Thayer, Missouri, to Springfield to take classes three times a week, then back to West Plains where he continued to work full time. In 2012, he flipped his schedule to live in Springfield during the workweek, then come home on weekends serving his family and home health clients. That grind also lasted two long years. The sacrifice paid off when he re- turned to West Plains for his first med- ical job out of residency. The time he spent previously at the hospital helped
It was really easy for me to go into family medicine because when you’re doing PT, you’re seeing a patient for 30–45 minutes and you really get to know them.
12 | OZARKS HEALTHCARE | WINTER 2021
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