|
 |
|
Brent Lemonds pauses during a tour of
Vanderbilt Medical Center's new state-of-the-art
emergency department, of which he is administrative
director. |
Growing up in McKenzie, Brent Lemonds soaked up small
town life, with youthful relish uncovering interests and
aptitudes that eventually carried him away from his
hometown.
Now, living in Franklin, a registered nurse and
administrative director of emergency services at Vanderbilt
University Medical Center—at a time when health issues are
on the front burner of almost everyone’s agenda—he glides on
the cutting edge of a new era in healthcare, balancing
patient care and safety with financial concerns and
technological advances.
Excellence is a byword for 43-year-old Brent, who Marilyn
Dubree, Vanderbilt’s chief nursing officer, characterizes as
“extraordinary”.
sider him to be one of the most collaborative and
innovative employees at Vanderbilt,” she says, “and we are
so lucky to have him as a colleague in this work that we
have to do. There are a lot of good nurses at Vanderbilt,
but he stands head and shoulders above the rest.”
Brent is responsible for administrating the 45,000-visit
level 1 trauma center and its 49 million dollar budget, as
well as the center’s IV team and resuscitation program. He
acts in an advisory capacity for the pediatric emergency
department of Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital and as liaison
for radiology nursing and the PICC team (specialists in
inserting catheters used for long-term intravenous
treatment.) He is also a member of the clinical faculty for
Vanderbilt University School of Nursing.
A star in human relationships as well, not to mention a
loving family man with a wife and three children, Brent
says, “McKenzie gave me a great foundation for accomplishing
everything I have achieved.”
He was the first child born to Robert and Betty Lemonds,
who have also moved on from McKenzie. Robert, retired from
the Milan Arsenal and National Guard, lives in Wildersville
and Betty (now Levister) lives in Milan. Also a nurse, she
worked at the hospital in Milan and for Home Heath Care in
Paris. Sister Cheri, eight years younger than Brent, also
lives in Milan.
As a youth, Brent was manager of the football team, where
he received his first experiences in dealing with injuries
and gained an interest in helping others.
“I learned a lot from Dr. (Volker) Winkler, who was team
physician,” says Brent. “And I had taken first aid and
CPR... It was interesting.”
A straight-A student and member of the Beta Club at
McKenzie High School, his interest in aiding human suffering
was sparked when his mother stopped to assist at the scene
of an auto collision in nearby Atwood.
“She asked me to stay with a little girl who was hurt,”
he says. “What made an impression on me was that there were
a lot of adults standing around but they weren’t doing
anything. I didn’t want to get caught unprepared in the
future, so I became interested in taking CPR and first aid.”
His first job was at J.A. Abernathy Hardware and
Furniture, where he sold and delivered furniture and worked
in the hardware store.
“I would say the customer service skills I learned there
are huge,” he says. “I use that every day relating with
co-workers and patients and family members here that I deal
with... It’s funny how those lessons you learn stay with you
for a long time.”
After graduating from high school in 1980, he attended
the University of Tennessee at Martin and the McKenzie
Vocational-Technical School.
“My plan was to work my way through college as an EMT,”
he shares. However, he found himself not suited to the
pre-med program in which he was enrolled at UTM. Realizing
it was the wrong career path, he left after a year and went
to work for the Weakley County Ambulance Service as an EMT.
In 1983, he started nursing school at Union University.
To pay his way, he worked weekends at Jackson General
Hospital’s critical care unit.
The Union curriculum “was great,” he notes. “It was
academically hard but I learned a lot and it was a good
foundation education that I’ve used ever since; and I have
to go back to McKenzie High School, that was good for me
too. I’m still using the skills I developed in McKenzie.”
He developed early on a desire to excel, a quest he says
has always played a role in his interest in Vanderbilt, a
facility he says “is very much an excellent place to work,
an excellent place for patients to receive care, and an
excellent place for doctors to practice medicine.”
He has, in fact, just completed the second year of his
second tenure with the hospital, abbreviated by two years as
director of emergency, flight, and trauma services at
Johnson City Medical Center, part of the Mountain States
Health Alliance, another level 1 trauma center. Previously,
at Vanderbilt, he was manager of the emergency department he
now directs.
His early years comprised a plethora of nursing, EMT/paramedic,
and teaching positions interspersed with his own studies.
Following his Associate of Nursing degree from Union in
1985, he successfully challenged the Tennessee EMT-Paramedic
examination in ‘88; obtained from the University of Memphis
in 1993 a Bachelor of Science in Education with a major in
health and safety and concentration on emergency medical
services; and graduated with distinction from the University
of St. Francis’ Master of Health Services Administration
Program in 1999 with a perfect, 4.0 grade point average.
At Jackson State Community College, he taught and later
directed the Emergency Medical Technology program, from 1986
to ‘92, when he became adjunct faculty after taking on the
responsibility as director of the Medical Center EMS at
Jackson-Madison County General Hospital. Five years later,
he assumed the role of executive director of the hospital’s
Emergency Services Center of Excellence, where he remained
until assuming his first role at Vanderbilt.
In the meantime, he met his wife, Barbara, with whom he
was married in 1987, while teaching at Jackson State.
“I had students in labor and delivery and she was a nurse
in labor and delivery,” says Brent, admitting that, when the
two met, it was “pretty much love at first sight.”
Brent and family: wife
Barbara, twins Chase and Rebekah, and Anna Rachel.
A Christian singer as well as a registered nurse, Barbara
played piano at a Baptist church when the couple met and
both have since taught Sunday School. She is now a clinical
care nurse at the Vanderbilt Clinic. The couple has
14-year-old twins, Chase and Rebekah, and a nine-year-old
daughter, Anna Rachel.
Brent boasts that his children are very athletic: Rebekah
and Anna are soccer players while all three are on the swim
team and Chase just started playing football as a freshman.
As a family, the Lemonds enjoy boating and fishing, but,
Brent admits, with his busy schedule, it wasn’t until last
year that he began a regular exercise program, a change made
when he decided to lose some weight in order to raise money
for the American Heart Association. Cognizant of the
organization’s life saving message, he now exercises three
times a week.
After all, saving lives is Brent’s business, and although
his patient contact is now indirect, he says, concerning his
supervision of other nurses, “I don’t get to take care of
patients anymore but I get to take care of the people that
take care of the patients, and that’s a very important
responsibility.”
Part of that responsibility is simply finding talented
nurses in the midst of a tremendous nursing shortage taking
place not only in nursing but also in allied health fields
like respiratory therapy, radiology, pharmacy, and physical
therapy. Dubree notes there is also a shortage of faculty
for nursing.
“It’s a complicated problem,” she says, and one that is
compounded by a growing number of patients at a time when
seasoned nurses are growing older and young people looking
at career choices have greater options than were previously
available, at more competitive wages.
Nevertheless, she says, nursing is a “fabulous career
choice—it’s such a great career—it’s so affirming what you
can do for people.”
Brent agrees, noting, “Nursing has non-monetary rewards.
The feeling when you’re able to help people and families and
when you see people recover from illness is inspiring;
that’s something you can’t put a price tag on. Nursing is a
very rewarding profession.”
Nevertheless, Vanderbilt is applying for magnet status
due to its efforts at creating working conditions in which
it is able to attract nurses even in times of severe
shortage.
Helping in that effort is another McKenzie native, who has
worked at Vanderbilt for 28 years: Nancy Proctor, chief
information officer for Vanderbilt University Hospital and
Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital. A graduate of the University
of Memphis, her parents are Jane Atkins and the late J.W.
Atkins. She and husband John have one son, Ryan, age 17.
“We have several information technology projects underway
to help meet nursing needs” says Nancy. She and her team are
responsible for developing computer systems to support
clinicians and streamline patient flow, such as the “white
board” system that prompts the health team regarding
pertinent patient information while also establishing
workflow and tracking patients.
Another project in the works is Horizon Expert
Documentation, an electronic nursing documentation and
assessment system with access to the patient’s electronic
medical record. Time spent on laborious, handwritten
documentation is reduced, contributing significantly to
nursing satisfaction and retention as it will allow nurses
to spend more time providing direct patient care.
“We want Vanderbilt to be a place nurses want to come
to,” Nancy continues, mentioning a computerized staffing and
scheduling system, to be implemented next year, whereby
nurses can perform their own scheduling and sign up for
shifts.
High-tech information systems are becoming more and more
important simply because of the amount of information
medical teams must deal with in order to deliver the best
care to patients.
“Hospitals are all trying to become safer places for
people to be,” says Brent, noting Vanderbilt deals with a
high risk population and is a major referral center,
accepting patients too sick to be dealt with at other
hospitals.
A computer at every bedside is just one asset of the
recent, 12 million dollar, state-of-the-art renovation that
nearly doubled the size of the emergency department, from 27
to 45 beds, including four trauma bays—set up as operating
rooms so that surgery can take place immediately if
needed—and 16 critical care rooms, plus specialized areas
for chest pain and stroke patients. All rooms have “creature
comforts” like TVs and recliners.
It also features a larger waiting room area, a family
grief room, a new hazardous materials decontamination area,
and a conference and teaching center as well as its own
X-ray department and CT scanners.
Ambulances from various
facilities line up at the new dock of Vanderbilt's recently
renovated emergency department.
A central work area makes use of the white board system
for patient tracking, including number of patients waiting
and average time from intake to discharge, as well as more
vital patient information.
Brent is particularly proud of the new, innovative
psychiatric area for patients awaiting transfer from the
emergency department, a scheme he helped to conceive to
relieve both patients and staff.
Formerly, psychiatric patients were required to wait
under guard an average of 9.33 hours in rooms not designed
for comfort. Now, eight rooms located in an enclosed area
monitored by cameras and centrally located staff provide a
safe, comfortable environment.
One of six level 1 trauma centers in the state,
Vanderbilt sees 3,500 level 1 trauma patients per
year--victims of shootings, stabbings, accidents, and
vehicle collisions--who must be in the operating room within
an hour, with only 15 minutes in the emergency room to
evaluate their condition.
“We have to decide whether to send the patient directly
to the OR or to do a CT scan; making that decision has been
proven to save patient’s lives,” says Brent, noting a team
composed of a trauma surgeon, two nurses and a technician,
an emergency physician and emergency resident as well as a
radiologist are “usually standing in room before the patient
arrives” in level 1 trauma cases.
To ensure quality, a trauma conference is held every
Monday in which videos of actual treatment scenes, recorded
throughout the week, are reviewed and critiqued.
“We believe that we can learn from our mistakes,” says
Brent, who heads to Austin in the spring to deliver a
presentation regarding the importance of analyzing adverse
outcomes in health care in order to improve methodologies.
He weighs in on controversial issues in emergency health
care by first making note that Vanderbilt is a safety net
hospital, receiving state funding to ensure its ability to
care for patients from across the state.
“The state depends on us to provide care to patients who
can’t get care anywhere else,” he says, noting Vanderbilt’s
enhanced capabilities owing to its status as an academic
hospital, where doctors with diverse specialties are
employed to train other doctors, as well as being a research
organization.
He mentions, as well, the fact that the facility serves a
disproportional share of non-funded patients, second only to
Memphis in its indigent-base.
“What I see in the state is a basic failure of primary
care,” he says. “People don’t have access to primary care,
so they depend a lot on emergency care. If health care
dollars were going to more prevention of problems like heart
disease, it would be less expensive than trying to deal with
heart surgery and diabetes. Patients need to have a
relationship with a primary care physician,” he continues.
“If they go to the ER and see a different physician every
time, people will be uninformed and patients will not get
consistent care.”
He gained a deeper appreciation for the advantages of
modern medicine and technologies last year when he traveled
to Guyana as part of the department’s annual mission trip,
where machete injuries—inflicted through intentional
violence—were the most common cause of trauma.
“We taught pediatric life support classes and provided
medical support for the emergency room,” he said. “It was a
great experience; I’d love to go back.”
As for his future plans, Brent says, “I just want to be a
good family man and my career plans are to be at Vanderbilt.
I want to rise to meet the challenge I’m met with here and
strive for excellence in everything I do, which is in line
with Vanderbilt’s culture—it’s expected here.”
He ponders that he is seldom able to visit McKenzie,
though he enjoys reunions at Christmastime with members of
the Webb and Lemonds families.
Thinking back on his developing years in the small town,
he says, “I think some people are intimidated by a place
like Nashville, but the real thing you have to learn is that
to get things done it’s all about working with other
people—and it's those lessons I learned in McKenzie—that’s
what made me successful in everything I’ve done. I had
excellent mentors and when it gets right down to it, you
have to sit down at the table with individuals to make
things happen. If you can do that in McKenzie, you can do it
anywhere.”
|
2005 Feature Archives: |
|
|
|
|
|
2004
Feature
Archives: |
|
|
|
. |
|
2003
Feature
Archives: |
|
|
|
. |
|
2002
Feature
Archives: |
|
|
|
. |
|
2001
Feature
Archives: |
|
|
|
