Bob Lawrence, who has been a nurse at Conway Regional Medical Center for 50 years, is not retiring. Let’s get that straight.
“This is the best place to be, and I want to stay here as long as they’ll let me,” he said.
Lawrence, the first male nurse employed at the hospital, was recognized by president and CEO Matt Troup recently for five decades of dedication.
Troup said in a Facebook post that the hospital was established in 1921, “and Bob has been part of the fabric of the organization for over half its existence!”
As someone who has worked more than 20 years in health systems in the country, Troup said, he knows how rare it is to have an employee like Lawrence.
Registered nurse Peggy Clark, who works with Lawrence, and David Baker, a retired certified registered nurse anesthetist, sat in Lawrence’s interview because they said he won’t brag on himself.
The two said Lawrence is the person everyone wants to work with because of his knowledge and personality. He now works in the ambulatory surgery department, but he’s done it all.
“My grandmother is rolling over in her grave because she taught me not to talk about yourself,” the soft-spoken Lawrence said of his grandmother Sue Smith.
Lawrence is 72, “but I don’t look a day over 74,” he said, laughing.
The longtime nurse is known for his sense of humor, as well as his excellent nursing skills.
“He knows everything,” Clark said. “He has a photographic memory. His vast knowledge — you can ask him anything, and he has an answer.”
“And sometimes the answers are right,” Lawrence said.
Lawrence grew up in Harrison, the son of a schoolteacher and a salesman. He went to the University of Central Arkansas in Conway and majored in chemistry.
He knew Helene Brinkerhoff of Harrison, who was the chief nursing officer at Conway Memorial Hospital, as it was called then.
“I came out to say, ‘Hi,’” Lawrence said. “I realized I had some skills they badly needed.”
He knew advanced cardiac life support, for one. Lawrence had already worked for four or five years as a licensed practical nurse at the hospital in Harrison.
“This is what I was meant to do,” Lawrence said of nursing.
He started July 1, 1969, at the Conway hospital.
“There were only about 70 beds,” he said. Now, the medical center has 150 beds. There was no intensive-care unit at first.
Lawrence became a registered nurse and was a surgery nurse. Being a male nurse was a rarity.
“Every man who needed to be shave-prepped, they’d say, ‘Hey, Bob …’”
Lawrence became the charge nurse on the 3 p.m.-to-11 a.m. shift in the intensive-care unit when it opened in 1972.
In about 1974, the ICU supervisor asked him to switch with her and be the director of ICU, and she’d be a staff nurse.
“About three years later, I moved to the central nursing office — administrative nursing,” he said. But he didn’t enjoy it.
“Eight years later, I went back home to surgery,” Lawrence said. “That was in the early ’80s, and I’ve been there ever since.
“Although I’ve done some administrative nursing, I didn’t get into nursing to get rich,” he said. “I enjoy the patient-nurse relationship and the technical aspect,” he said — interpreting monitors, lab tests, taking patients’ blood pressure.
When Lawrence started at the Conway hospital in 1969, there weren’t computers; he wrote everything on paper with three colors of ink, he said.
“Back then, all hospitals used red ink from 11 at night till 7 in the morning; blue or black ink from 7-3 and green ink on the 3-11 [p.m.] shift, so the doctors could just look at something, and they knew what time of the day, what shift” it was,” Lawrence said.
“Later, we did away with the colored ink because we did away with three shifts and started 10-hour days.”
The equipment was bare bones, too.
“We had manual blood-pressure cuffs and stethoscopes, and a thermometer you held under your tongue, and that was the extent of it,” he said. “Now there are real complex monitoring systems, so we know exactly what’s going on with the patients at all times.
“In my opinion, it’s been a really great place to work because we’re always getting new equipment, doing new procedures and getting new specialists,” he said. “It’s ever-changing, and every year, it’s new. The hospital has been good about keeping up.”
Lawrence said Conway Regional was the second hospital in Arkansas to perform laparoscopic gallbladder surgery.
“Dr. Robert L. Clark (now retired) and I went to Auburn University and learned to do laparoscopic gallbladder surgery,” Lawrence said.
Lawrence has done everything from change bandages to save lives by resuscitating patients, but he downplays his role as a nurse.
Baker interjected: “He’s not bragging on himself enough. This is a service ministry we have. People are scared to death, and there is no one better than Bob … his caring about them. I never met anyone who could talk to patients better. … Even when he wasn’t on call, I’d call him.”
Clark agreed: “When I was on call, if you needed someone, you called Bob.”
She said when a person came in once with a ruptured aneurysm, Lawrence was the nurse the staff wanted to call.
“Bob can start an IV on a gnat,” Baker said. “Everybody comes and gets him to start an IV on a child.”
Lawrence has helped deliver many babies, too.
“When they were delivered by Cesarean section, the surgery crew did that,” he said.
“We got to the point where the OB nurses did the C-sections, and the surgery crew quit doing them,” Lawrence said. “I hope that I’ve done my lifetime quota of babies.”
Baker said, “It’s stressful.”
However, he said, Lawrence is a role model for how to perform under pressure.
“He’s cool as a cucumber,” Baker said.
Lawrence had a two-word answer for how he handles the stress of his job: “I fish.” He said he likes bass, crappie and trout fishing, as well as fly-fishing. He used to own a Harley-Davidson motorcycle, and he and Baker took long rides.
“I miss it at times,” Lawrence said.
He was also a pilot. Lawrence said he and Clark’s husband, who is also a nurse anesthetist, and others owned a plane together.
Lawrence said when he got to the retirement age of 66, he was working in the main operating room at Conway Regional.
“I wasn’t really ready to quit working. My friends at the surgery center invited me over, and I’ve been here ever since,” he said.
“He’s been a blessing to all of us,” Baker said. “The help he’s given to the OR nurses, anesthesia — he’s kind of like family to everybody.”
Also, Baker said Lawrence could have become a doctor if he’d wanted to. Lawrence said he occasionally thought about going to medical school, but he was busy and happy being a nurse.
“Nursing is a team effort, and I feel real fortunate that we have a great team here with good leadership, and we can offer excellent-quality health care to the community.
“Oftentimes, I meet people in the community that their family or themselves had been someone I’d worked with before that would say, ‘Thank you,’” Lawrence said.
“This is my calling in life. I get to be of some service to other people and to my community,” he said.
Lawrence isn’t retiring now — but someday he will.
“I’m 72, so I figure I’ll work four days a week for a couple of years — or one really bad day in the operating room, whichever comes first,” he said.
And his friends laughed.
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.