Jennifer Gaudiani

I went into internal medicine after medical school because I enjoy teaching people about their bodies and helping them find a way to understand what’s happening to them in the context of their own lives. During my internal medicine residency, I chose not to go on to subspecialize because I continued to like treating the whole person.

I took my love of general medicine to the field Hospital Medicine (taking care of adults while they are hospitalized) as I thought it would give me the best chance of having long, unrushed conversations with patients without keeping anyone waiting in a waiting room.

I joined the Hospital Medicine staff at Denver Health Medical Center in 2007 and had worked here for a year when I got an email from Dr. Philip Mehler (whom I knew at the time was the head of our hospital system, but didn’t know was also the world expert in the medical complications of eating disorders), asking if anyone wanted to help him open up the nation’s only medical stabilization program for patients with severe anorexia nervosa.

He envisioned bringing multidisciplinary expertise to the definitive stabilization of patients with anorexia nervosa, when they were too medically compromised to start treatment at even inpatient/residential eating disorder programs. I volunteered immediately, and my career changed forever.