Black has served at Pafford Health Systems Medical Clinic for a year.

This article is one in a series of articles in observance of National Nurse’s Week. We will be posting profiles of local nurses each day.

Nicole Black, a nurse practitioner at the Pafford Health Systems Medical Clinic in Hope, said things there are calm now but, just a few months before, their location on 100 East 20th Street and Main was a flurry of activity:

“At the peak of COVID, this last surge, especially, we had a lot of stress around because our numbers people that wanted to just be tested were super high,” she said.

Members of the ownership also pitched in, along with Pafford COO Clay Hobbs, to help with the demand for testing.  “It really was a group effort to get through those days,” Black continued. “We also did infusions, IV infusions for COVID positive patients at the time. So it's just trying to plan as ahead as best we could, and working together. I mean, everybody rotated different jobs to make sure the job got done.”

The clinic continues to offer COVID testing and therapies. Black said she was impressed with the results of the IV infusion therapies that became available. “People generally felt better. In 24 hours they were about 50 percent better, in 48 hours back to normal for the most of the population,” she said.

With the pandemic now at a reduced intensity, Black now finds herself back in a daily routine that includes early morning in the clinic’s office answering emails. “I get here about eight o'clock,” she said. “I check emails, returned phone calls with labs that I've had come in. We run a lot of labs in our office, but there are some we still have to send out to LabCorp. So I review those in the morning and go ahead and start calling patients back.”

Then, an hour later, the patients arrive. “I finish the inpatients. Except for Mondays, we're open till 8 pm.  But every other day we close at five, so I stop seeing patients at about 4:30 and then return the rest of the phone calls that I need to return.”

(By the way, Black says the Pafford Clinic is accepting new patients.)

Black began to feel her way into the medical profession from an early age because of the circumstances of her childhood. “I grew up in a small town. We lived in poverty. The church helped my family out a lot. And I just knew that when I grew up, I wanted to find a way to give back to the community so I could help other people, the way that I had been helped,” she said.

As Black reached middle school age, her family moved in with a patient of her mother. “I was able to help with mealtimes and things like that. So I knew nursing was probably going to be my next step.”

In terms of training, Black is mostly home grown, having gone to University of Arkansas Hope-Texarkana for her Bachelor of Science in Nursing through a program the campus had with University of Arkansas Medical Sciences.

After ten years of service as a Registered Nurse, she began her quest with Walden University to become a Nurse Practitioner, impelled by what she saw while working as an Intensive Care Unit nurse. “I saw a lot of people coming in for the same issues. And I thought if I could get on more of the preventative side, that I can help prevent some of these major illnesses,” Black said.

She has been serving now at the Pafford Clinic for a year and a month, having started in April of 2021. Since then she has seen the impact of Pafford’s services to the community, specifically in cutting wait times for patients here and reducing their costs for services in comparison to an emergency room visit.

Black has seen the expansion of the lab services Pafford offers: “When we have an issue and we address it, they address it fast. Like initially, we didn't do all our labs in house. We sent them out. Well, we wanted to do them in house. So they got the equipment. Now we can read them out within about 15 minutes on most labs.”

Black wanted to straighten out one misconception some hold about the clinic. “A lot of people in the community still think we're only for Pafford employees, but we're not we're open to the public.”

Asked what conditions she sees the most that, if addressed, could lead to better public health in and around Hope, Black said, “Obesity is still a major problem. High blood pressure, diabetes--those are probably my top. The thing that our little community does lack is a lot of education, like outside resources for education for patients. We don't have classes for healthy cooking for diabetics, or for people with high blood pressure; they need to have a low sodium diet.”

As for what she would tell others who may aspire to join the medical profession, Black advised taking a course in emergency medicine sooner in your education than she did but emphasized the rewards of being in a field that is much in need. “It's the perfect way to give back and to be able to pour yourself into other people and help them in their situation that they might not be able to get through [alone],” Black said. “You just have to be mindful and treat people like they're your family, kindness and sincerity go a long way. Just listening.”