Award-winning Conway Regional nurse is a patient cheerleader
Award-winning Conway Regional nurse is a patient cheerleader
Lori Reynolds is an award-winning nurse at Conway Regional Medical Center, a career that she felt called to 30 years ago while happily working as a hairdresser in Greenbrier.
Reynolds, 51, has been recognized for making a positive impact on her profession, being named to the national program 100 Great Nurses — that was “a big shock,” she said — and earlier this month she was surprised again with the DAISY Award voted on by her peers.
“These things are so nice, but I love seeing the joy when other people are recognized for things they’ve done. It’s much easier to celebrate other people,” she said.
In her 24th year at the hospital, Reynolds is the cancer program outreach coordinator located in the Short Stay Outpatient Center. She provides direct care, primarily for adult patients who are being treated for everything from cancer to osteoporosis and who are at “different stages of life,” she said. She also helps patients with paperwork and bills and does education in the community on cancer prevention and screenings.
“The real focus I’ve had throughout my career is connecting people with resources — getting people help,” she said, emphasizing the last three words.
“When I was little, I wanted to be a nurse. I would doctor all my dolls and give them shots and pretend and put bandages on them and stuff. As I grew older, I kind of lost that dream, I guess. It wasn’t really something I thought about,” she said.
Her parents were born in Arkansas, but they moved to Dallas, Texas, where she was born and lived until her family moved to Greenbrier when she was 14. And, yes, she is a huge Dallas Cowboys fan.
She married Terry, the first person her age whom she met in Arkansas. He was the stepson of a real estate agent who sold a home to her parents.
“I went to beauty school and opened up a beauty salon in Greenbrier and loved it, I really did,” she said.
However, she recalled that it was a December almost three decades ago ago when she felt another calling.
“The Lord, not audibly, but in my spirit, said, ‘I want you to be a nurse.’ I was like, uh, OK; I’m very ill-prepared for this. I hadn’t had those courses in high school … I was more there to be social,” she said, laughing.
But her husband, a fourth-generation cattle farmer, supported her career change. She worked at her beauty salon while she went to nursing school at the University of Central Arkansas. It took her 5 1/2 years, and she graduated in 1994.
“There were many times — I had an 18-month-old at home, a husband, and I was still trying to run a business — it was very, very difficult,” she said. “The middle of my sophomore year of nursing school, I found out I was pregnant with my daughter. I had midterms one week, had a child the next week and went back to school the next week.”
Her daughter, Mallori Kunkel, is a registered nurse at Conway Regional Medical Center, too, and works as a second-floor charge nurse on the night shift. Her son, Mitch Reynolds, is an occupational therapist.
Reynolds said she has a motto: “’The Lord prepares those he calls; he doesn’t necessarily call those who are already prepared.’ I’m a prime example of, ‘I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.’ I was not prepared financially, emotionally, nothing, and here I am.”
After UCA graduation, her first job was as a charge nurse, a part-time position, at what was then Conway County Hospital in Morrilton, now CHI St. Vincent. She also worked in home health care and, in 1996, got a job at Conway Regional Medical Center in the home-health area. Her responsibility was to talk to patients in the hospital before they were discharged to home care to help them with the transition.
“I loved being in the hospital setting … so I ended up transferring into the hospital. I went into case management. My primary unit was second floor, which was oncology. I just fell in love with the oncology patients, the oncology family. And Dr. [Sue] Tsuda was here, and we were really starting our oncology program.
She was also a floor nurse on the weekends and worked six days a week, but then she moved to full-time on the oncology floor to provide direct care to patients. “I did floor nursing, and then I moved to outpatient where I am to this day,” Reynolds said.
She said the most fulfilling part of her job “is meeting people in their lives when they need emotional, spiritual and physical support and just being able to help them. I do a lot of counseling with patients and families who have been newly diagnosed; they have a lot of questions about things.
“I call it being a cheerleader sometimes,” Reynolds said. “When I talk to my patients, I talk to them [the family] about being cheerleaders for this person. They’re in a battle at this moment. Also, that family has got to have a cheerleader for them, because caregiving is very, very tiresome; it really is.
We focus so much on the patient, but we forget about those who are supporting them.
“I personally have taken care of multiple family members either in my home or their home. It’s the most rewarding and draining thing all at the same time.
“Our patients, we get to know them. We’re a family,” she said.
Reynolds paused during a phone interview to say hello to a former patient who came back to Conway Regional Medical Center for a visit.
“Hello, young man. Are you missing us already? We miss you, too. You be good,” she said.
She apologizes for the interruption, adding, “I had to say hello to my buddy.’ “Everybody goes right by my door. I leave my door open most all the time, unless I’m on a confidential call. I don’t like that barrier of separation.”
Although she tried to keep it quiet, her DAISY Award nomination mentioned that she sometimes uses her own money to buy things for patients.
DAISY Award stands for Diseases Attacking the Immune System. It’s an international award started in memory of a patient who died in his 30s of an immune disorder, and his family wanted a way to thank his caregivers.
Nurses at the hospital can be nominated by a co-worker, a family, a physician or anybody in the community. Names aren’t used in the voting process, just the stories about the nominee and a number is assigned to it.
Her name and story will be on the DAISY website, she said.
The fact that she was picked by her peers, albeit she was anonymous, is the most gratifying part of the honor, Reynolds said.
Angie Longing, chief nursing officer and vice president for patient care services, went
Our patients, we get to know them. We’re a family.” Lori AWARDWINNING Reynolds NURSE AT CONWAY REGIONAL MEDICAL CENTER
to nursing school at UCA with Reynolds and now supervises her.
“I was humbled and honored to give her the DAISY Award,” Longing said.
Longing said Reynolds has always had the perfect personality for nursing.
“Honestly, Lori Reynolds, she is a role model for pretty much anything — a leader, a mentor, compassion, exemplary practice. She has a positive attitude in everything she does,” Longing said.
In the DAISY nomination, “it goes on and on about how positive and upbeat she is, even in hard times; she is thoughtful for her patients. She’s a bright light on dark days; she spreads cheer wherever she goes. She definitely has a heart of gold.”
Longing said Reynolds hasn’t changed since they graduated from UCA together; she’s just as kind and compassionate.
“She exemplifies all the highest qualities that we would want for any nurse and has always been that way; it’s not something she had to grow into,” Longing said.
Reynolds has seen a lot of changes in health care, though.
“Oh, my. When I started in nursing, we paper-charted. Everything was paper-charted. Every patient had an individual flip chart that was kept in a central location, like a nurse’s station. All the doctors handwrote everything, and you know the joke about you can’t read a doctor’s handwriting, I was part of that …. Now everything’s electronic. What’s so neat, I can go back and look at a patient’s CT scan from five years ago in about 3 seconds. Twenty years
ago, I would have had to notify medical records, they’d have to pull the chart; I’d have to go down and get it,” she said.
She can’t narrow down rewarding moments over the years to just one.
“I will tell you, sometimes it’s not even what people say, but you sit back and you can watch them and you know you’ve helped them,” Reynolds said.
“I’ve had one [patient’s] husband — his wife passed away in our inpatient unit — he would come back, sometimes once a month, sometimes we wouldn’t see for him for two or three months; for years, he did this. He felt such an attachment to us, and we did to him.”
She said they would take him to lunch and celebrate milestones his wife had gone through.
“He’d come by and say, ‘Y’all remember what we were doing four years ago in that room right there?’ We’d say, ‘Yes, we do.’
“That’s what I’m talking about.”
When a patient “graduates” from the outpatient unit, Reynolds said, “we celebrate those usually with balloons, or a cake or cookie, and we do a card and we all sign it. We write little notes: ‘We’re going to miss our daily coffee with you.’ Or if they’re a football fan, we say, ‘How do you think they’re going to do next year?’
“A patient last week said, ‘I truly don’t know what I’m going to do when I don’t come see you every day.’ We said, ‘We don’t know what we’re going to do without you; who’s going to keep us in line?’”
In addition to an emotionally and physically taxing job during the day, Reynolds comes home and trades her scrubs for coveralls and helps her husband on the family farm.
“He’s a beef cattle farmer. He does that seven days a week, and I do it on the days I’m not nursing. It’s very physically taxing. What is neat about it, I actually get the best of both worlds. I’ve always been a country girl,
and I always knew I belonged on a farm. I get to walk in two different worlds that I just love. They’re both 24/7; nursing is 24/7; farming is 24/7.
“That’s my husband’s passion; my passion is nursing,” she said.
And, she knows it’s her calling.
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 3270370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.