Shared Calling: Brothers find their medical home in Moses Lake
Drs. Zachary, left, and Nathan Thomas at the Columbia Basin Home and Garden Show in February, where they were displaying their side project, exterior home lighting. Both brothers are family physicians in Moses Lake, Zach at Samaritan Healthcare and Nate at Confluence Health.
FILE PHOTO
MOSES LAKE — Some professions run in families: a lawyer’s children may follow in their parent’s footsteps, or a teacher may inspire their children to teach. But occasionally a profession just fits two brothers, like medicine did Zach and Nate Thomas.
“We both from young ages had always felt like medicine was a good occupation,” said Dr. Zachary Thomas, a family physician at Samaritan Healthcare. “I think when we were kids, it was like, ‘Yeah, we're going to be doctors.’ Nothing ever pulled us from either side, so we just kept on that goal.”
Zach is the elder brother by about a year and a half, which meant he completed his studies ahead of Dr. Nathan Thomas, who practices family medicine at Confluence Health. The brothers grew up in a small town near Calgary, Alberta, they said, and came to the States for medical school and residency. Nate attended medical school in El Paso, Texas, and completed his residency in Reno, Nevada in 2022. Zach went to medical school in Phoenix, where he met and married his wife, who was from Moses Lake. After completing his residency in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 2021, Zach started looking for work.
“We were already in a whole other part of the country, and we had options to go anywhere,” he said. “When I was (anticipating) graduating residency and scrolling through hundreds of different jobs, Moses Lake popped up in a list. I probably would have kept scrolling if I didn't know that it was my wife's hometown. I clicked on it, and it seemed to be a great job in every different metric that I was using, and having her family here was a bonus.”
Zach told his brother about how much he liked living in Moses Lake, he said, and about a year later Nate had earned an offer from Confluence.
Today, both are married with children – Nate and his wife have three, and Zach and his wife are expecting their fifth this summer.
The Thomas brothers recently took on a side venture, selling exterior home lighting, which gives them a chance to work with their hands and get out of the clinics. Still, caring for patients is the first priority, Zach said.
“When they have health issues, (people) realize how important their health is to them (and) that can be some of the most vulnerable moments in their life,” Zach said. “And then they turn to a doctor to help them through those difficult points in their life. It can be really meaningful to be able to be that person, to help someone in their moment of need.”