eidra Bohannon is no stranger to hospitals. Growing up, she and her brother were used to spending time there while their mother got treatment for congestive heart failure, which had been exacerbated by smoking.
It was her mother’s final hospitalization that helped Bohannon settle on a career path: respiratory therapy. Seeing the compassionate care her mom received from respiratory therapists at Atlanta’s Piedmont Hospital sealed the deal.
“It’s definitely a field I think I was meant to go into,” said Bohannon, a student in the Byrdine F. Lewis School of Nursing & Health Professions and a scholarship volleyball player. “I feel very passionate about the patients I see in my clinical rotations, because a lot of them remind me of my mom and her condition.”
She loves caring for patients in an urban setting during her clinical rotations at Grady Memorial Hospital.
“I have seen up close and personal what you have to deal with with these types of patients, and it makes me want to do nothing but care for them and help them in any way I can,” said Bohannon, whose mother died last year.
She’s treated people in intensive care, surgical units and the very busy emergency department.
“You see a lot, and you do a lot,” she said. “It’s a teaching hospital, so you don’t feel like you’re just there, standing around.”
Seeing some of the sickest and most severely injured people in Atlanta drives Bohannon’s sense of mission.
“I get a feeling at Grady that I just need to be there,” she said.
While her mother, her best cheerleader, is gone, Bohannon still feels blessed.
“I know she’s not going to see me graduate, but she told me that she was proud of me and my brother, and that’s all anyone can ask for,” she said.
—Jeremy Craig