Welcome to Reeves e-Portfolio

Hello!  Welcome to my page. My name is Neal Reeves and I live in Little Rock, Arkansas.  I am currently a Clinical Assistant Professor in the College of Nursing at University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.

My journey in nursing started long ago in the military where I was trained as a combat medic.  This introduced me to the potential of all that nursing has to offer.  The military also presented me the ability to go back to school to become an LPN and later an RN.  Most of my nursing career was spent in the ICU and Emergency Department.  I loved the fast paced environment the offered.  Those environments presented me with the mental challenge that was a driver for me to learn more about the population and disease processes I was caring for from day to day.  I quickly realized the importance of certification in my specialty and my desire to validate my expertise as a critical care nurse.  I eventually went on to earn a certification as a Critical Care Registered Nurse (CCRN) through the American Association of Critical Care Nursing (AACN).  As I progressed in the critical care departments, I eventually went into management and considered a career in hospital administration.  It was at this time I was exposed to informatics as our facility was implementing a new Electronic Health Record (EHR).  While I loved this new found specialty I continued down my path in hospital administration.  I eventually returned to school and obtained my MBA when once again nursing informatics present an opportunity to me.  

I went to work for a small niche critical care EHR vendor.  I spent six years implementing our product all over the United States, Canada, and United Kingdom.  Again I was presented with the opportunity to manage and did so for 3 of those six years.  In 2013, I was asked to move the the Product Management department of our organization as a business analyst.  I was somewhat an ideas guy for new functionality within our systems for new features and functionalities.  This was a great opportunity for me to take the lessons I learned from my implementation experiences and apply them in new development.  This was a whole new love for me in informatics as I was now responsible for product direction in many ways.  In 2014, I was asked to become the Product Manager for all of our product lines and now definitely set the direction for development.  This was a position I never even considered as I embarked in this specialty of informatics.  This now allows me to combine my nursing knowledge, informatics knowledge, as well as business knowledge as we develop our applications to not only assist in the deliver in quality, efficient care, but adds a business case of doing so at a lower cost while making money for my organization.  This was an experience that was fun in that everyone looked to me for answers, but was also one of the most challenging positions I have ever held.  As my journey continued, things changed in the vendor software world and I was presented with a change in direction for my career path.  I took a position as the System Analyst Manager at Arkansas Children's Hospital (ACH) as they embarked on replacing a 30+ year old EMR from Meditech to Epic. Not coming from a pediatric background, this gave me new and interesting challenges. Completing a system wide conversion while pursuing my DNP has proven to be challenging as I try to find time for school, work, and family.  If one conversion was not enough, ACH is opened a second facility in NW Arkansas in early 2018.  This make two separate implementation and go-lives on the Epic platform within a four month time period.  This all eventually led me to think about how can I as an individual help change the face of healthcare.  This is how I landed with Walmart as a Senior Manager of Health Innovations, directing the expansion of their healthcare division across the country.  The focus is deliver full service and affordable healthcare options to communities with minimal access to care.   

I decided to go back to school to earn a DNP because I have learned in the last nine years that most informatics are self taught and have little to no formal training in informatics.  I knew I needed to be involved in the growth of this specialty and what better way to do that than by raising the specialty with a degree that gives me the tools to be that change leader and grow our specialty.  A few years ago, I had the opportunity to listen to Dr. Virginia Saba, very much a leading force in informatics, talk about the need to develop leaders for our specialty.  She encouraged us to not only seek degree's with a specialty in informatics but go on and achieve the level of PhD and DNP.  She spoke of how we need to develop leaders that can not only get the evidence out to the field, but create the evidence.  This is when I knew I needed to take up that torch.  The essentials I will have learned to leverage will allow me to become that leader in nursing and my specialty of nursing informatics.  As nurses, we owe it to our patients, ourselves, and our profession to be the best prepared nurses we can be so that we are leaders in healthcare delivery and the policy that affects our nation.    

My personal interest include reading, any history pertaining to WWII, spending time with my wife as we play with grandkids or traveling Europe.  We are very much outdoors people and spend many of our summer weekends on the lake with our kids and grandkids and our fall weekends watching college football and riding our bikes.