Growing up, Max Jump heard the same thing over and over again: He looked like his father. And apparently, the resemblance went beyond appearances.
For a boy approaching his teenage years, this was not welcome news.
“You hit middle school and that teenage rebellion kicks in,” Max recalls. “You’re like, ‘I don’t want to be like my dad. Why would I want that?’”
Today, Max is a physician, like his father, Jeffrey Jump. In a turn of events that might have horrified his younger self, he’s also working alongside him at CommonSpirit Medical Group – Integrative Medicine – Chattanooga, where two generations of physicians have come together after following paths that were similar in some respects and different in others.
A winding road
Jeffrey grew up in Willard, Ohio, a small town where his earliest exposure to medicine came through an old-fashioned general practitioner.
The doctor delivered babies, set bones, performed appendectomies and handled just about anything else that came through his door. He even delivered Jeffrey himself.
“He was my first introduction to medicine,” Jeffrey says. “Growing up, he was really all I knew of it.”
Jeffrey didn’t enter college intending to become a physician. At Wittenberg University in Ohio, he pursued an interest in marine biology, spending a summer studying at Duke University’s marine laboratory. Although he enjoyed the experience, he eventually began questioning whether he wanted to make a career of it.
His mother had a suggestion, which she’d apparently made more than once. “You could always be a doctor,” she’d tell him.
Eventually, Jeffrey took her advice and enrolled in medical school at Ohio State University, where what began as a practical decision developed into a genuine love for medicine.
His subsequent path was hardly conventional. A Navy scholarship helped pay for medical school, and he went on to serve as a physician supporting submarine crews stationed at Kings Bay, Georgia. He later worked in an emergency department in South Georgia before moving to Chattanooga in 1996 to complete his family medicine residency at Memorial Hospital.
Along the way, Jeffrey developed an interest in integrative medicine, which combines conventional medical care with other approaches to improving health and preventing illness. In 1998, he established an integrative medicine practice in Chattanooga, eventually taking it independent, expanding its services and later bringing it back into the Memorial system.
Looking back, Jeffrey sees a lesson in his circuitous journey, one that he and his wife would eventually pass along to their children.
“If you don’t know what your passion in life is when you’re 18, that’s OK,” he says. “But at some point, you need to pick something, pursue it passionately and see where it takes you.”
Following his own path
Despite his youthful determination not to become a carbon copy of his father, Max eventually enrolled at Wittenberg, where he, too, studied marine biology and spent time at Duke’s marine laboratory. He also managed to add an experience his father missed: six weeks studying in the Bahamas.
By college, Max had developed a serious interest in medicine, but getting there proved more difficult than he expected. Although he performed well academically, he struggled to achieve the score he wanted on the Medical College Admission Test, prompting him to return to Chattanooga and spend a year working.
During that time, he tended bar at Clyde’s, documented patient encounters as an emergency department scribe at Memorial and coached high school lacrosse.
Max eventually enrolled in a biomedical sciences master’s program at Lincoln Memorial University, strengthening his academic preparation before entering the university’s DeBusk College of Osteopathic Medicine.
While attending medical school, he volunteered with a fire department in the Cumberland Gap area, eventually becoming one of its chiefs. He also served as president of his medical school class, adding to an already demanding schedule.
Jeffrey has a word for his son’s tendency to take on multiple responsibilities: “Overachiever,” he says with a teasing smile.
Max sees it differently. “It’s just what I love to do,” he explains. “When I find something I’m passionate about, I’m not willing to give it up unless it starts affecting my quality of life.”
His firefighting experience was especially rewarding because of the opportunity to serve a small rural community.
“Being able to help people through some of their worst moments was such a unique opportunity,” he says. “When the streets flooded at 2 a.m., we’d be out there unclogging drains and making sure Memaw got into a car so we could get her somewhere safe.”
After earning his medical degree, Max completed an internal medicine residency at Riverside Methodist Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. His training included substantial hospital and intensive care experience, exposing him to aspects of medicine he hadn’t expected to enjoy so much.
“I never wavered from primary care, but I didn’t expect to find as much passion in other areas of medicine as I did during residency,” he says. “Those experiences gave me a unique perspective on critical illness, chronic disease and aging, and taught me how to navigate difficult conversations with patients and their families about their wishes for care.”
For Max, primary care offered the chance to put those lessons to work over time, building relationships with patients and helping them make decisions about their long-term health.
In that respect, at least, the apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree.
The other Jump
There is another important figure in the story of Jeffrey and Max Jump, and neither man hesitates to acknowledge her influence.
Jeffrey’s wife and Max’s mother, Terry Jump, played a central role in building the practice that father and son now share. When Jeffrey took the practice independent, Terry became its manager, overseeing the business while her husband concentrated on medicine.
She helped expand the operation, developed other business ventures and supervised construction of the building on East Main Street that houses the practice today.
“Not long after I took the practice private, she came on board as practice manager and ran it for years,” Jeffrey says. “She’s extremely passionate, driven, hardworking and entrepreneurial. That allowed me to focus on practicing medicine and helping develop the integrated model we envisioned, while she ran the business, expanded it and loved every minute of it.”
Max describes his mother as someone who doesn’t spend much time wondering whether something can be done. She simply figures out how to do it, an attitude he believes he inherited from both parents.
“Growing up, there wasn’t a whole lot of ‘Can we do it?’ It was more, ‘We’ll figure it out,’ he says. “I learned that from both my parents. When you’re faced with a challenge, you don’t spend much time wondering whether you can overcome it. You just find a way to make it happen.”
And when the question arose of who had encouraged Max to return to Chattanooga, Jeffrey didn’t point to himself. He pointed to Terry, whose interest in having her grandchildren closer to home was apparently no small factor.
With Max and his wife now raising two young sons, her enthusiasm for the arrangement is understandable.
Jeffrey may have gained a colleague, but Terry got something she wanted, too.
More tools in the toolbox
Although Jeffrey and Max came into medicine at different times and through different training programs, their philosophies of patient care have much in common.
Jeffrey’s interest in integrative medicine began early in his career, when he became convinced that conventional medicine, while remarkably effective at treating many diseases and acute medical problems, could do more to address the factors that contribute to poor health.
He offers an example: Modern medicine has effective treatments for heart attacks, including procedures to restore blood flow to the heart. But Jeffrey is equally interested in what happens during the years leading up to that event and whether changes in diet, exercise, stress management or other aspects of a patient’s lifestyle might have reduced the risk.
Integrative medicine, as he practices it, is about considering additional approaches alongside conventional treatment while weighing the evidence, risks and potential benefits.
“We’re trying to add more tools to the toolbox,” he says. “Traditionally, physicians have relied on prescriptions, surgery and other procedures. Those are great tools when they’re needed, but there might be others that are just as effective, or even more appropriate, depending on the circumstances.”
The Chattanooga practice reflects that philosophy, offering primary care alongside services that include nutritional counseling, behavioral health counseling and therapeutic massage.
Max shares his father’s interest in prevention, particularly in helping patients understand how their everyday decisions can affect their health years down the road.
His experience treating critically ill patients during residency reinforced that perspective, giving him firsthand knowledge of what chronic disease can mean for patients and their families.
For Max, primary care offers an opportunity to have those conversations earlier, before patients reach a point where their choices become more limited.
“Everybody has different preferences when it comes to their health,” he says. “We don’t all want to pursue every treatment option, and that’s OK. What’s important is having the information you need to make an informed decision.”
Two doctors, one hallway
For all their similarities, Jeffrey and Max are not practicing medicine as a single unit. Each has his own patients and responsibilities, although working in the same clinic gives them opportunities to exchange ideas and consult each other.
For Max, one of the pleasures of working alongside his father is having his experience and advice close at hand.
“Being able to walk down the hallway and ask him a question, even about something as simple as billing, is surreal,” he says. “But it’s been really cool.”
Jeffrey is equally enthusiastic about having his son nearby, particularly because he believes Max is well suited to primary care and the relationships that make it rewarding.
“Not everybody finds joy in medicine the same way, but for me, it’s about the relationships,” Jeffrey says. “I’ve been practicing here for 30 years, and some of my patients have been with me for more than 25. We’ve grown up together, and that’s really special.”
Jeffrey also appreciates having a younger physician fresh from residency who can bring new knowledge and perspectives to the practice. He suggests that he probably asks Max more questions than Max asks him, an assertion his son appears reluctant to accept.
Still, the admiration is unmistakable.
Jeffrey describes Max as a “younger, smarter, better looking version” of himself, a characterization delivered with the good-natured humor that comes easily between the two.
Max, meanwhile, is quick to praise his father’s accomplishments and the relationships he’s built during nearly three decades of practicing medicine in Chattanooga.
“If I can become even a quarter of the doctor he is and pick up some of his abilities along the way, I’ll have done well,” Max says.
Their partnership also offers something more lasting. Jeffrey knows the practice he spent much of his career developing will have another generation of leadership, although he emphasizes that he never tried to dictate his son’s professional future.
A family resemblance
Max, who once bristled at being told how much he resembled his father, now describes working alongside him as a lifelong dream come true.
For Jeffrey, the feeling is harder to describe, if only because he never imagined the possibility.
“It’s not a dream come true because I never dreamt it,” he says.
But he couldn’t be prouder to have his son there.