Orleans Community Health welcomes family nurse practitioner

Michelle Smith joins healthcare center within Medina Memorial

Photo by Ginny Kropf: Scott Robinson, director of Marketing, Communication and Outreach at Orleans Community Health, chats with Michelle Smith, a family nurse practitioner, and the newest addition to the Medina Healthcare Center.

MEDINA – Orleans Community Health has announced a third professional has joined the recently opened Medina Healthcare Center, located on the first floor of Medina Memorial Hospital

Effective Monday, family nurse practitioner Michelle Smith of Lockport will start seeing patients. She joins certified pediatric nurse practitioner Leah Brenner and board-certified nurse practitioner Pamela Eaton. All are accepting new patients.

Taking Eaton’s place at the Albion Healthcare Center several days a week is Dr. Vinay Aggarwal, who will divide his time between Brockport and Albion.

Photo courtesy of Scott Robinson: Michelle Smith, a family nurse practitioner, stands in the hallway of the Medina Healthcare Center at Medina Memorial Hospital, where she will begin seeing patients on Monday.

Smith brings a background of widespread education and more than 20 years’ experience in emergency and critical care.

Growing up, Smith and her family moved continuously with her father, who was in the military. She graduated from high school in Cheektowaga, where one of her assignments for graduation was to do an internship in any facility.

“I was very shy, but I needed to get my hours in, so they took me to a nursing home across the street,” Smith said. “I helped feed the people, and I thought, ‘I can do this.’ I knew then I wanted a career in which I could help people. I just didn’t know then how I was going to do it.”

She attended Erie I BOCES and graduated as a licensed practical nurse in 1988. Her first job was at ECMC in the trauma step-down unit.

She married and had two children when she decided to continue her education as a registered nurse, and she enrolled at D’Youville College. During that time, she had two more children. In 2000, she went to work at Children’s Hospital, where her specialty was the Emergency Room, Pre-natal Intensive Care Unit and Neo-natal Intensive Care Unit.

In 2010 she returned to Buffalo to be where her parents were and again went to work at Children’s Hospital.  In 2016, she completed her master’s degree in nursing education. Next came a job at Presbyterian Hospital in Charlotte, N.C., working in the Women’s Care Unit for 10 years.

Feeling the need to come back to Buffalo to be where her parents were, Smith again went to work at Children’s Hospital. In 2018, she went back to D’Youville to get her family nurse practitioner degree. Next followed a job at the Community Health Care Center of Buffalo, where she did chronic disease management and refugee re-settlement program.

From there, in 2023, Smith went to Urgent Care at a Fellowship Program at WellNow. Graduating from that, she went to Rochester as a visiting nurse for several years.

Searching for a job as a nurse practitioner at a smaller and more personal environment led to her applying at Orleans Community Health.

“Being a nurse practitioner was a way for me to care for the entire family as a whole, not just a toe or one part that needed attention,” Smith said. “I went to an employment agency that deals with the medical field late last winter, and they initiated contact here.”

Smith’s hours will be 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. Appointments may be made by calling (585) 798-2550.

Smith and her husband Josh each had four children when they met and now have 2-year-old twins together.

Along the way, she discovered a saying by Maya Angelou which sums up Smith’s reason for choosing to become a family nurse practitioner.

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said. People will forget what you did. But people will never forget how you made them feel.”