DR . WHO
DR . WHO
MEMBER SPOTLIGHT DR . LESLEY KELLIE
AUTHOR Kathryn Vance
Imagine : you ’ re a fourth-year nursing student about to finish
school , with a contract at a major hospital system guaranteed after graduation . You decide to go on a medical mission trip to Belize to work in a free clinic . You take the patient ’ s blood pressure as you ’ ve done so many times before , recording the numbers and informing the team doctor of the patient ’ s hypertension . Suddenly , boom ! Buzzing around in your head is one word : “ why ?”
All at once , you realize you ’ re overwhelmed with wanting to know the “ why ” behind the medicine you ’ ve studied for the last four years . You want more . That ’ s when you decide . Now it ’ s time to start all over and go back to medical school .
Born in the Philippines to a long line of medical women , Dr . Lesley Kellie was an only child but was always surrounded by a large family , living with five other cousins . They lived with their grandmother while their parents worked in another city to support them . Times were often hard .
“ I grew up wearing one pair of slippers and stapling them so that they would last longer . There were times where we had to use salt as toothpaste because we could not afford it ,” she said . “ My family learned resiliency by working hard , with the ultimate goal to move to the United States .”
When she was 12 years old , the Louisville nursing home Britthaven sponsored several Filipino nurses , including Dr . Kellie ’ s mother , to come work in the US . The family emigrated here in 1994 . Dr . Kellie was now in a new country , in a new community . She ’ d left some of her closest family and the friends of her youth behind . However , the constant in her life was always nursing , so much so that in high school she worked as an aide at Britthaven . It seemed a natural fit for her to enter the same field that so many women in her family shared . In fact , in her family , there really was no other option .
“ You go to nursing school because it ’ s a great job and there are so many opportunities with it . Then later on , if you want to do something else , you could try that after . But you had to try nursing first so that you ’ d have a really good , stable job .”
In 2000 , Dr . Kellie entered nursing school at the University of Louisville . In her third year , she was fortunate to receive a scholarship from Norton Healthcare that would pay for her schooling with one caveat : that she would work as a nurse for their hospital system during nursing school and for three years after graduation . She gladly accepted , and this opportunity allowed her to see the inpatient side of medicine and to see firsthand what nurses actually did .
Working in the ICU at Norton downtown , her schedule was grueling , but extremely beneficial . She was able to study nursing in real life , not just in a textbook , applying new lessons in an opportunity she would not otherwise have had . This allowed her to work with a collaborative team and learn a lot more about the processes she had read about .
“ I ’ d ask why they were doing things - in a very inquisitive way , I wasn ’ t being accusatory . I just wanted to know why they were doing something or why they were prescribing a certain medicine . They were so open to questions and that really helped me .”
During her third year in nursing school , she had the chance to join a week-long free clinic program in rural Kentucky , offering health screenings to patients without insurance . She enjoyed it so much she returned the next year . Then , full of gratitude for these experiences , she took another step and joined the international medical mission trip . That trip to Gales Point , Belize was what really made her decide that she wanted more . She wanted always to know the “ why ” and she wanted to be able to give her patients the same privilege .
32 LOUISVILLE MEDICINE