From Dr. Pritchard:
I’m Dr. Jlyn Pritchard – a Mom to 3 wild humans, wife to Jon, & Family Physician in Spokane, WA, practicing Integrative Family & Obesity Medicine. I dreamed of being a doctor when I was a kid & was inspired by my step-father’s dedication to the ER as a physician.
I attended Gonzaga University, then moved to West Virginia to attend the West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine. During that time, my now-husband Jon served in the Army at Ft. Bragg. We lived in separate states (and countries, during his deployment) for the duration of medical school, finally moving in together over 3 years after we got married.
Residency was here in Spokane at a great community-based program that provided true full spectrum & rural training. I quickly found, however, that the landscape change that occurred in healthcare during my time in training meant that the life & practice I had envisioned for myself wasn’t exactly possible.
I made a commitment to myself my senior year of college that I would never lose my “art”. I wrote poetry in high school. In College, I ran a solo photography company in my spare time – a journey that continued through medical school & into residency. I discovered writing was cathartic for me during residency, helping me process all my experiences. It felt like ever-so-slowly, my creativity was being drained as I practiced medicine; or perhaps smothered by other things deemed more important.
Finding the possibility of DPC has restored some of that creativity. Restoration is going to look different for everyone. For me, right now it looks different than it did 5 years ago. And maybe that’s the beauty in all of this: evolution. DPC as a movement has seen the need in healthcare & stepped in to meet them; as an individual I’ve seen the gaps in my own life & made intentional changes to remedy them.
Thread Health just opened in October 2022. I’m a novice when it comes to experience here. But DPC has allowed me to find little bits of myself again, to lean into my values, & the inception of Thread has been the scariest, most satisfying decision in my career.