Thrive-Health Guide Southern West Virginia August 2020 - Page 18

Lynn Legg receives a veteran’s appreciation award at the Beckley VA Hospital.
SUBMITTED PHOTO
She’s served in several positions — both clinical
and administrative — in local health care facilities
throughout her 44-year nursing career. Among those
roles were jobs in rural home health care, long-term
care facilities and as nurse manager for Plateau’s
Intensive Care Unit.
It’s from her most recent stop — 12 years at the
Beckley VA — that Legg hung up her stethoscope on
July 31, retiring as nurse executive, one of the four
highest leadership positions in the hospital.
Just like the conversation with her mother that led
her to nursing all those years ago, it was a conversation
with her daughter, that led her to the VA.
“Around the time of 9/11, I thought about joining
the military,” she says. “I discussed it with a recruiter
and my daughter, but we decided the best thing for
me was to not join the military but rather to try to
get on at the VA and to take care of the veterans and
not become one.”
So, in 2008, Legg was hired as the designated learning
officer at the Beckley VA, training all nursing
staff for the hospital.
Very quickly, however, the chief of geriatrics position
opened up and, following the love for long-term
care she had developed, she applied for and got that
position.
“I absolutely loved it,” she said, of the role that
placed her in charge of, among other things, a 50-bed
nursing home inside the hospital as well as the hospital’s
home-based program. “There’s something about
long-term care that kind of gets into your blood,” she
said. “You get to see that the last years of their (patients)
lives are happy.”
Although Legg enjoyed her job as geriatrics chief,
when the associate director for patient care (nurse
executive) position opened up in 2011, she decided
to take the leap.
“I felt it was the best way I could have an impact on
healthcare,” she said of the new role.
As nurse executive, Legg was responsible for pro-
18 • THRIVE • AUGUST 2020