Beauty and Brains! Inside Dr. Jen Arnold’s ‘Exciting’ Job in Boston: ‘It’s a Different Challenge!’

An incredible opportunity! The Little Couple star Dr. Jen Arnold details her rewarding career at the Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard University in an exclusive video interview with In Touch. 

The accomplished neonatologist, 48, is the program director for the facility’s simulation program.  “The program is just so big and so impactful that he needed help leading it,” she says. “It’s a different challenge, but I get to help lead a very, very busy program, which is exciting.”

Jen, who shares children William and Zoey with husband Bill Klein, is incredibly proud of the work she does — and for good reason!

What Is The Little Couple Star Jen Arnold’s Job?

“I like to think of it as a program for clinical or medical institutions that supports education and training,” the Florida native explains. “Innovation and patient safety are the big pillars, I guess, is what I would say. We actually use human factors and systems engineering to help improve workflows and processes and mitigate hazards in healthcare.”

Through simulations, Jen and her team are able to “help train both new clinicians” in “high risk, rare situations,” namely in pediatrics.

“A surgeon can operate on a patient before they actually operate on a patient,” Jen notes. “As you can imagine, children are born with unique anatomy and the ability for surgeons to rehearse in that manner with such realism and technology is really great.”

From the beginning, Jen was drawn to pediatrics. “I think one [reason] is the fact that I was a patient all my life. So I mean, I’ve been through over 30 orthopedic surgeries you know, mostly during childhood,” she recalls.

“So I’m very comfortable in that space. As an adult now, you know … at the time, I didn’t really enjoy it, not to say that anyone should ever enjoy going through that, but I learned a lot,” she continues. “I think it not only shaped me who I am, but also, I really saw and had the passion to wanna give back to kids in a way that I had benefited.”

Prior to moving from Florida to New England, Jen built an impressive resumé in both her education and career.

In 2017, Jen and Bill relocated themselves and their two adopted children to St. Petersburg so she could take a job as the director of the Simulation Center at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Medical Center.

Before that, while living in Houston, she was board certified in pediatric and neonatal medicine and served as the director of the Simulation Center at Texas Children’s Hospital. She also took the education route and taught neonatology at Baylor University.

Jen received her medical degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland. She then completed a residency, Master of Science in medical education and did her neonatal-perinatal fellowship training at the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh and University of Pittsburgh Medical School.

“If you can make the difference for a baby or a child,” she tells In Touch, “it just, you know, it fills my heart.”