Nurse of the Week: Emory Nursing Student, Haley Reid, Perseveres Through Tragedy to Become Family’s First College Graduate

Haley Reid’s academic accomplishments gave pride to her whole family after she was accepted into the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing at Emory University and became the first in her family to go to college. However, her journey toward becoming a nurse was far from easy after her father unexpectedly passed away two weeks before she started nursing school. She also pushed through financial hardship caused by her father’s death, including the loss of her childhood home, and a year later her mother was diagnosed with cancer at a routine checkup.

This series of personal tragedies would threaten the dreams and well-being of anyone, but Reid pushed through it all and refused to give up. She focused on her studies, attended her clinical hours, and maintained her responsibilities as a student ambassador and Alumni Office intern. On top of all of her work at school she still found ways to balance new responsibilities caring for her mom, using her nursing skills to help her mom through chemotherapy while she completed her senior practicum in the emergency department at Saint Joseph’s Hospital. [et_bloom_inline optin_id=optin_18]

Reid has a lot to celebrate this year as she prepares to graduate with honors from Emory’s School of Nursing. She has also been accepted into Emory’s Family Nurse Practitioner master’s degree program, and will be celebrating with her mom who is now healthy and cancer-free. After completing the nurse practitioner program, Reid hopes to work in rural and underserved communities where she can strengthen her Spanish background and work in a mostly Spanish community. She also has a love for emergency medicine and hopes that if she practices in a rural setting she will see more emergency and trauma experience as a family nurse practitioner than she would get in a big city like Atlanta. In an interview for Emory, Reid made a point of wanting future students and nurses to trust the process, something she didn’t always do as a student, but it’s what got her to where she is today.