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.
Her daughter Kathleen Reed, DNP, APRN, FNP-C, who is also a family nurse practitioner, has gone with her on every mission trip. Growing up around her mother’s work was a major influence on Dr. Kathleen Reed’s decision to become a nurse.
“She would take her lunch break to pick me up from school so she could go back and see patients,” she said. “They had me filing charts and shredding paper (at the clinic). If we were sick, we were up there lying under her desk.”
Thanks to this proximity, Dr. Kathleen Reed said, “I could see the relationship she built with her patients and how much trust they had in her and how much she cared for them.” At 27, Dr. Kathleen Reed has already earned her DNP and works as a nurse practitioner for Stern Cardiovascular, Inc. Both Reeds are two-time alumnae of the UT Health Science Center College of Nursing, and Dr. Kathleen Reed is a member of the Alumni Advisory Board.
Like her mother, she enjoys going on mission trips as a nurse. “The biggest reason I go, is that the Lord has blessed me with these gifts and talents, and I need to go share His love and goodness,” Dr. Kathleen Reed said. “Also, it is such an eye-opener of how people live in other countries. It helps me to reset my mind and shows me that I’m very grateful for everything I have here in the United States.”
Dr. Laura Reed said the patients they saw in Honduras had similar medical conditions to those she sees in Memphis, such as ear infections or sore throats. But, without the medical outreach, most would have to travel more than an hour for medical care and often did not have transportation.
Her experiences in mission work abroad have inspired her to consider working with her church to do an outreach mission closer to home – specifically in DeSoto County, Mississippi. She plans to start small to gauge need and interest.
“On the mission trip, everybody had the thought, ‘how can we bring this back to where we live because we don’t have to go far to reach out to people in need, especially when they are in our own backyard,’ ” Dr. Kathleen Reed said.
Whether she returns to Honduras or not, it seems accurate to say that Dr. Laura Reed’s mission will continue.