By Darrell Laurant

Published: May 7, 2008

Hospitals are facing a shortage of nurses these days. Kim Price can’t figure out why.

“I can’t imagine doing anything else,” she said earlier this week, “and there are so many possibilities in the field now.”

In other words, it’s not just about taking temperatures and emptying bedpans anymore. The modern nurse is more like a junior partner to the physician, as well as the person standing between you and a nightmarish hospital stay.

That’s why this is National Nurse’s Week. It’s also why the “Reflections on Healing” museum was established at Virginia Baptist Hospital almost exactly a year ago.

I would have written about this museum before, except that I’d never heard of it.

“We’re trying to get the word out,” said Price.

Now the director of Women’s and Children’s services at Virginia Baptist, she has a direct emotional attachment to the museum, the core of which is a history of the hospital’s nursing school program.

“I was part of the last graduating class in 1982,” Price said, “and I always get nostalgic walking through here.”

The Smithsonian, it’s not — Price estimates that the museum might get 10 visitors on a good day (the hours are 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday). Which is a shame, because it is nicely displayed, well-organized and quite interesting.

Walking through it with Price, I learned a lot. I learned that Mary Frances Cowling, who started the school, actually lived in the hospital for most of her life. That the students in the Class of 1940 were paid $8 a day for laundry, food and incidentals (that went up to $10 for seniors). That businessman O.B. Barker, one of the hospital’s early benefactors, looks like the devil.

I mean that literally, although I sure he was a fine and honorable man. It’s the two tufts of hair, one of either side of his head, which poke up like horns in his portrait.

Also on display are mounted photos of the Blue Goose (the school’s bus) and the notorious Miss Chase, a medical dummy with a penchant for appearing in strange and whimsical places — like closets, dark hallways and bathroom stalls.

“She’s still around here,” Price said. “Somewhere.”

Former Lynchburg Museum Director Tom Ledford put the display together along with Thayer Design. For the next few months, Reflections on Healing has borrowed an exhibit on “African-American Health Professionals,” a collection of artifacts and photographs formerly shown at the Legacy Museum.

If you ever visited someone at Virginia Baptist, you’ll recognize the mural that dominates one wall of the museum space. It was painted by Bedford-born artist William Dodge, who learned art in Paris, and it’s what visitors stared at as they sat on the waiting room couches. It shows Jesus healing a man lying on a cot and includes the Scripture verse “I came as a healer.”

So did Kim Price, and she never left.

“The best thing about this museum,” she said, “is when groups of schoolkids come in, and I get to tell them about nursing as a career.”

You don’t need a key or an appointment to enter the museum. It’s wide open to the public, and the hospital trusts you.

After all, Jesus and O.B. Barker are watching.