Military veterans who need urgent care don't always live in big cities.
Even if they live in out-of-the-way places, they require high-level medical care, and one Little Rock nurse with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has worked tirelessly on their behalf.
She recently got recognized for it.
Teresa West, 63, one of more than 100,000 registered nurses in the VA network, received the VA Secretary's Award for Excellence in Nursing.
West handles a territory that stretches from southeast Texas to the Florida Panhandle. Within that large area are places that don't have a lot of doctors, so West has worked to connect patients with their doctors remotely.
"Our goal is to take care of the veteran," she said. "There's not a lot of people who want to go and work 80 miles from the big city. There is Shreveport, and [that hub] has Alexandria, Fort Pope and Monroe. There are not a lot of providers who want to go and live in that area."
West is a nurse manger for the South Central VA Health Care Network, also known as VISN 16. She has rolled out a telehealth program that has helped veterans in her region gain access to fast health care. Even if there isn't a doctor's office down the road from where a veteran lives, she finds ways to get the health care directly to that veteran through technology.
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"It's an avenue for the veteran to get the care they need," she said. "That has really made a different during this covid-19 [pandemic]."
Establishing a video connection with veterans at their homes through smartphones, tablets or personal computers has been an effective way to exchange information and give veterans the confidence they need that someone is looking after them, West said.
Judy Esch-Brown is the director of the clinical resource hub in Little Rock where West works. She said no one has been more valuable in implementing the telehealth program to veterans than West.
"It's all been her doing the training," she said. "She's been promoting it and showing all of us how it's a benefit to veterans. She is the biggest reason why it's been so successful."
West said she was "grateful to God" to learn she had been selected for the prestigious award.
Every nurse in the VA system turns in a proficiency report. Those reports are reviewed by a panel at the network level. That panel chooses the one that has the best performance and sends it to a regional panel, which sends it to a national panel. In the end, all those panels reached the same conclusion -- that West was worthy of the excellence award.
"Every time I even talk about [it], I'm floored," she said. "I just think how blessed I am for being selected."
Knowing she is making an impact in the lives of veterans -- particularly those who are suffering from physical and mental injuries from combat -- is a reward unlike any other, she said. She said she takes pride in doing a job that matters.
"It has its challenges, but at the same time when a veteran writes you a letter and says, 'Thank you for giving me hope' ... it means so much," West said.
Metro on 05/18/2020