Self-described ‘country doctor’ named 2026 Paul S. Rhoads Humanity in Medicine honoree

Donald Smith, MD, is the 2026 Paul S. Rhoads Humanity in Medicine Award winner.

Donald Smith, MD, knew exactly what kind of physician he wanted to be.

Growing up the son of a pastor, his childhood was spent bouncing around towns mostly west of the Mississippi River before his family settled in Houston, Texas.

The doctors that took care of him and his siblings in the '60s and '70s were the kind of small-town physicians who treated people from birth to death, who made house calls, who knew everything about their patients' lives, not just what physically ailed them.

It was good, honest work that he enjoyed for nearly 30 years, serving in smaller Indiana communities like Wabash, Columbia City, and French Lick.

"When I went to Wabash, I truly got in on the tail end of family medicine in the way I had seen it growing up. I joined a group of four docs. All five of us went to the hospital. All five of us went to nursing homes. I think four out of five of us helped cover the ER," Dr. Smith said.

"We literally got up in the morning and went to the hospital. Then you went to the office, and you ran back to the hospital at noon. The ER was still staffed by all the local docs, so you took your turn covering shifts there, and we all went to the nursing homes. It was truly cradle-to-the-grave care.

"That was what I had envisioned, and it's a tremendous experience. But I tell people all the time, I'm not God's gift to medicine. My only claim to fame is that I was an average family doctor in a small Midwest town."

Well, that and the 2026 Paul S. Rhoads Humanity in Medicine Award winner.

Dr. Smith's selection as the 46th recipient of the honor was announced tonight at Reid Health's annual medical staff appreciation and new physician reception. Nominations were solicited from patients, physicians, and healthcare workers.

Named after its first honoree in 1983 - the late Paul S. Rhoads, MD - the Humanity in Medicine Award honors the memory of Dr. Rhoads for his service to patients and medicine. He was the founding director of Reid's Medical Education Department and helped organize the hospice program and the Wayne County adult clinic for the indigent.

"The Humanity in Medicine Award is recognition of those physicians who have had significant contributions to the field of medicine. But aside from clinical competence, it reflects a job well done, incorporating clinical practice along with a spirit of service, a spirit of healing, and just a focus on the well-being of our patients," said Ben Wells, Reid Health President/CEO.

"Healthcare and the delivery of medicine can be hard but recognizing and seeing these individuals who do it well and do it with the patient at the heart, that's what this award is about."

Pam Jones serves as Vice President/General Counsel at Reid and oversees the Family Medicine Residency program where Dr. Smith served as a member of the faculty for seven years before retiring this year.

"I'm thrilled to celebrate this well-deserved recognition for Dr. Smith. He truly reflects the very best of humanity in medicine," she said.

"His compassion, humility, and genuine respect for others are evident in the way he cares for patients, supports his colleagues, and mentors our residents. He reminds us excellence in medicine is not only about clinical knowledge and skill but also about listening, building trust, and treating every person with dignity. His example helps shape the kind of physicians we aspire to develop through our program."

Born in Rock Island, Illinois, Dr. Smith and his family were on the move throughout his childhood. Stops included places like Omaha, Nebraska, and Olrik, South Dakota, before they landed in Houston where he graduated from a high school that had some 3,000 students.

"I had a wonderful upbringing. My parents were wonderful people, gave me a great background, taught me all the essentials that I think some people are missing today - great work ethic, apply yourself, study hard, do your absolute best," Dr. Smith said.

"I had always liked science, but somewhere in early high school, it dawned on me medicine was a way to be involved in science and scientific things and yet have connection with people."

And so after graduating high school, he traveled across the city to Houston Baptist University (now known as Houston Christian University) for college. For medical school, he had two choices - the University of Texas in Houston or Texas Tech University.

"At that time, Texas Tech was still a newer medical school, so it had less prestige. But I was sick of Houston," Dr. Smith said.

"I saw the waving green cotton fields that turned white in the fall outside the Texas Tech campus and said, 'This is where I'm headed.'"

The desire to be in a smaller community carried over to his choice for residency. He ended up with the University of Texas' program in Conroe, about 45 miles north of Houston.

"They had a program that was community-based, very similar to Reid," he said. "It was heavily weighted toward obstetrics, and their intention was to put family docs in small towns.

"I had hoped all my life - once I decided to be a doctor - to be like the ones I knew when I was growing up, and it was the kind of program that was really geared to do that."

During college, Dr. Smith married his wife, Bessie, a nurse and a native of tiny Carthage, Indiana. When it came time to start his practice, a fellow resident who had graduated two years earlier reached out with a pitch.

"He had gone back to Wabash where he grew up, and he came and recruited me. He would come by and he'd say, 'Smith, come to Indiana and make your wife happy,' so I did."

What followed was a nearly 30-year stint of practicing medicine mostly in smaller Hoosier communities, broken up by a period serving patients overseas in San Luis, Honduras.

"At some point in our lives, my wife and I wanted to do overseas work, some type of involvement in charity or missionary work. And so in 1998, we went to the country of Honduras and worked in a little mission hospital out in the mountains.

"It was heavily focused on acute care. I sewed up more machete cuts than I can remember. It certainly contributed to my overall perception of life and many things."

When Dr. Smith started his practice in 1991, he had three goals in mind - to pay off his school debt, to spend time practicing overseas, and to one day return to teaching.

During college, he had run the math lab at school and helped tutor others in the subject. While in his residency, he had spent time helping teach his fellow students, eventually earning the Resident Teacher of the Year Award when he graduated.

"That's been up by my diplomas in my office my whole career," he said. "I've enjoyed teaching since I was in college. Giving something to somebody and helping them understand something - seeing the light bulb come on - is one of the most exciting things I've done."

By January 2019, Dr. Smith was thinking life had passed him by and his third career goal was now out of reach, but an email changed that.

"I got a message from a recruiter out of the blue, just one they send to probably hundreds of people. It said there was a teaching position for family medicine in Indiana," he said.

"I looked at that and was like, 'Wow, that's fascinating, but I don't have an academic career or haven't been around med schools. I'm a country doctor, literally. I even make house calls.'

"I showed it to my wife, and she read it and said, 'You would love it.' So I called the recruiter. I said, 'Hey, you know, I'm down here in French Lick and West Baden, Indiana. We got 2,500 people. I'm the only doc in town. I don't think this 50-some-year-old guy is who you're looking for but just thought I'd call you."

Dr. Smith joined the faculty of Reid Health Family Medicine Residency, and two years later, he was awarded the Preceptor of the Year honor, exactly 30 years after receiving the teaching award he so cherished during his own residency.

"To get the Preceptor of the Year and put it up in the office right next to the other award, that really meant something," he said.

Former residents and faculty colleagues describe Dr. Smith as a patient, kind, and compassionate person who takes the time to get to know all those around him. He's also known for an ability to impart valuable lessons through a good story.

"It's one of the things that's most endearing about him," said Kelley Metcalfe, NP. "He'll incorporate a story into something that's a daily learning experience. And you think, 'Why was I listening to a story about fishing?' And then it all comes together later as I'm doing a chart at night."

"Do you know why us old people tell stories? Because that's what we got left in life," Dr. Smith joked. "You do this for 25 or 30 years, you accumulate a whole lot of them, right? The way I think, if somebody tells me an illustration, that makes more sense than sometimes a graph or a chart. So maybe that's why I tell so many stories, or maybe it's just my tendency to talk too much."

In addition to his work at the Reid Health Residency Clinic, Dr. Smith has seen nursing home patients and provided care on some Sundays at a free clinic for homeless and underserved people run by Rock Solid Ministries in Richmond.

When some residents expressed an interest in addiction medicine, he got the training needed to be able to provide them the education they were looking for.

"He's just a go-getter. Whatever we wanted, he was the first one to jump up and say, 'Let's do it,'" said Megan Carpenter, DO, a former resident now at Reid Medical Associates.

Jeffrey Lee, MD, is another former resident who recently returned to Reid after a fellowship in primary care sports medicine. For him, getting to see how Dr. Smith interacted with his patients served as a model for his own practice.

"With his incredibly vast experience, Dr. Smith always knew how to empathize, be non-judgmental, and provide amazing comfort and support," Dr. Lee said. "He knows what to say and how to customize a really good plan for each patient. He's just so good at it."

Although Dr. Smith had some doubts when he first joined the faculty (telling a colleague early on, "I'm like a football player in high school who got put on the varsity team, but after the first game realizes he was supposed to be on JV."), he adapted.

"What stood out to me about Dr. Smith was his ability to continue to improve on his own learning," said Tiffany Ridge, Director of Graduate & Continuing Medical Education, Clinical Research, & Residency Clinic at Reid.

"He knew to be able to stay on top of teaching residents, he had to be on the cutting edge of medicine as well. That's hard for anyone, let alone a physician. He has done a great job of keeping himself abreast of everything he felt he needed to be able to teach medicine to the generations to come."

Dr. Smith eventually served as the interim director of Reid's residency program for about two years before his retirement earlier this year.

"I think this was an incredible place to land. If I had tried to be part of some big center where you had 25 faculty and 30 residents, I probably wouldn't have made it," he said.

But there are times when he thinks back to his roots as a small-town physician.

"If there's anything I miss here, it's that there are still people in French Lick I think about - staff members and patients," Dr. Smith said. "When I talk to the staff members I worked with, I ask, 'How's he doing? How are they doing?'

"I think that kind of relationship you build - especially in small-town America - is really an exceptional part of family medicine."

Dr. Smith's humble and self-deprecating nature has left him struggling a bit to grasp why he was chosen as this year's Rhoads Humanity in Medicine honoree.

"It's a little bit daunting because I've been here seven years and in the grand scheme of Reid and the physicians I work with, that's not that many, but it's long enough to have seen some people get the award, and most of them have invested years working for Reid and serving this community," he said.

"I've looked it up, I've read about Dr. Rhoads and certainly would have to only stand in his shadow and in the shadow of the others that have gotten this award. And so I feel very honored. Beyond that, I'm grateful there were people who thought I deserved this and nominated me. I'm grateful I've done something they feel warrants that."