Dr. Jason Moore

If he needed to, Dr. Jason Moore could teach his class on pediatric sports injuries using x-rays solely from his own children’s broken bones over the years.

“That’s what happens when you have seven kids,” says Moore, a physician at ETSU Family Physicians of Bristol and faculty member at Quillen College of Medicine. “I actually got interrupted teaching that class once when one of my kids got injured.”

Ranging in age from 19 to 2, Moore’s children – Andrew Jason, Anna Joy, Aidan Jeremiah, Alex Joshua, Abram Josiah, Addi Janae and Avenly Jayne – have taught their father many things about life.

“They’re a blessing. Each one teaches me something new,” Moore says. “I’ve learned a whole lot more from them then they’ll ever learn from me.”

A native of Cincinnati, Ohio, Moore moved to the Tri-Cities serendipitously after graduating from medical school at The Ohio State University.

“I came down to the mountains of East Tennessee to interview for my residency because I wanted to see the fall colors,” he says. “I had no intention of actually coming here for residency.”

But after interviews at several other locations across the country, Moore says his mind kept returning   the Quillen College of Medicine. Soon, Moore and his wife, Tawnya, along with their “two and a half kids” at the time, packed up their things and came to East Tennessee – and they’ve been here ever since.

“I’m on year 16 of my three-year plan for living here,” Moore says with a chuckle. “We feel like we have family here now. Who I work with and who we have come to know here, they are our family here.”

Following his three years of residency, Moore was hired on as faculty at Quillen and as a practicing physician at clinic in Bristol.

“When I was deciding what to do with my life, I knew I wanted to either teach, be a doctor or be a minister,” Moore says. “I get to do all of that now in this job. I love what I am doing and I don’t see myself wanting to do something different.”

In addition to seeing patients, Moore spends a good portion of his time working with students ranging in education level from pre-med to residents.

“I love working with the students to show them the beauty and art of medicine,” Moore says. “I’ve been very blessed to be able to get the time with the students to develop relationships.”

It is his own relationships – those with his children, his wife, his colleagues and God – he says that help him to teach his students so much more than medicine.

“Medicine is not your whole life. It is not everything. It is very important to recognize that and to have a life outside of your medical bubble,” Moore says. “It is also really important to realize that in the tapestry that makes up my patients’ lives, I’m just a little thread in there. Their lives are so much more than medicine, too.”

Finding a life balance as a doctor, Moore recognizes from his own experiences, can be extremely challenging.

“Saying no to stuff is hard because I would like to do it all,” he says. “I get a kick out of being with the students, but at this point I still want to be seeing patients, too.”

And then, of course, there’s his family.

“This job gives me the flexibility that I’m not driven by having to see a certain number of patients every day or having to be on call every other night,” he says. “I could be making more money or more fame somewhere else, I realize, but it would be at the cost of something that is more important – my family.”

Moore says he has several goals in life and, with his strong faith both guiding him and keeping him humble, he works every day to achieve those objectives.

“My goals are to see my students do a whole lot more than I do, to take care of my patients, to stay happily married for the rest of my life and to let my kids know that their dad loves them more than his job,” Moore says. “Ultimately, it is hearing what God wants me to do and doing it on a daily basis.”

But don’t bother showering him with accolades for everything that he fits into each day, which, among all the other things, includes serving as the math and science teacher for his homeschooled children, running the kids to their soccer games, and a million other errands. Despite the action-packed days – he says he averages about three minutes of free time per day, from 11:45 p.m. to 11:48 p.m. when he falls asleep – Moore doesn’t see himself as doing anything particularly grandiose or worthy of praise.

“I’m just an average guy from the Midwest who got transplanted here by the grace of God and I get to do what I love on a daily basis,” he says.