Some might call family nurse practitioner Laura Reed, DNP, APRN, FNP-BC, CNE, a woman on a mission.
She recently returned from a weeklong mission trip to Honduras, her sixth such trip in eight years. She made all these trips with her church in Southaven, Mississippi; the other five were to El Salvador. In Honduras, Dr. Reed was part of a health care team that served 100 people in one day in medical outreach to a mountain village.
Why would someone who has spent nearly four decades in nursing take a week of vacation to work as a nurse in a developing country?
“It’s just my passion for serving others, providing medical care to those who need medical care,” Dr. Reed said. “It comes down to an inborn need to serve. I guess that’s what makes me a nurse.
Nursing is a family tradition for Dr. Reed. In fact, she counts 18 nurses over four generations in her family, including her mother, her daughter, her son, and her daughter-in-law. Dr. Reed is an associate professor and the concentration coordinator for the family nurse practitioner track in the College of Nursing’s Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Program. She has been on the faculty for 10 years and still practices one day each week.
Read more at our UTHSC news site.