PEORIA MAGAZINE April 2023

S P O T L I G H T

MEET ‘DR. VOZ’ Jump Simulation is an industry leader in no small part because of the vision and tireless efforts of John Vozenilek

BY LINDA SMITH BROWN PHOTO BY RON JOHNSON

T he career he thought he’d have: The lone doctor in a rural area, carrying a little black bag of medical instruments. The career he actually has: Medical director of the largest specially built medical simulation and innovation center in the country. Dr. John Vozenilek, 53, vice president and chief medical officer at OSF Innovation and founding executive director of Jump Trading Simulation & Education Center, oversees some of the most cutting-edge developments in health care today. “Ironically, as I went through under grad and medical school, I thought that I was going to be the classic rural doctor with the little black bag,” said Vozenilek. “Thinking I was going to be the one doc in the county.” But through the study of emergency medicine, the country doctor aspira tions were replaced by a bigger reality. “I found that through the process of medical school, what I liked was the

diversity of patients, the speed, the fact every patient was unknown and the problems needed to be solved,” said Vozenilek. “So, I wound up in an urban, Level 1 trauma center in the middle of Chicago, as far away from that dream of a rural doc in some county somewhere as I could possibly be,” he said. Born in upstate New York, Vozenilek and his family moved to Boca Raton, Florida, where he grew up surrounded by innovation. His father was one of the early members of the IBM team that brought the personal computer to life. “My father used to bring home devices,” from the office, said Vozenilek. “I saw a very early prototype of a mouse, before it was a thing.” The senior Vozenilek would observe how his kids interacted with devices and software. “So, I learned at a very young age how to do spreadsheets, for EMPIRE STATE TO SUNSHINE STATE

example,” Vozenilek said. “Very nerdy.” Vozenilek graduated from the University of Florida in Gainesville, then attended medical school at the University of Miami in Coral Gables. From there he went to Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois for the study of emergency medicine. ‘NERDY’ ROOTS SPROUT INTO A CAREER Vozenilek attended an academic conference on emergency medicine in 1999, when he encountered medical simulation for the first time. There were patient simulator devices, full robots, full human simulators. “I was there with a colleague and we volunteered to be part of a case presentation — a person who was having an airway emergency,” said Vozenilek. “Both of us dug into the case and it was really quite stressful. I was surprised. Here we are at the top of our field and getting stressed out by an overblown GI Joe.”

38 APRIL 2023 PEORIA MAGAZINE