Dr. Lisa Lucas initially thought she wanted to be a special education teacher. When she was in school, she became fascinated by the medical field when her class started learning about tracheostomies and feeding tubes. A friend suggested Lucas take a course for medical assistants.
On her first day on the job, the scrub tech walked out, and Lucas asked the anesthesiologist if she could learn how to be a scrub tech. He obliged and her passion was born.
“I started as a scrub tech, and my first day on the job, I met an anesthesiologist that actually saw potential and believed in me, and he kind of put me on this path,” Lucas said.
Lucas is a lifelong Memphian and was recently awarded the 2024 Alice Magaw Outstanding Clinical Anesthesia Practitioner Award . She is the current Chief Certified Registered Nurse Anesthesiologist at the Memphis Veterans Affairs Medical Center .