Today we’d like to introduce you to Laura Steelman.
Hi Laura , please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Bluebird Kids Health is a pediatric office that just began operating in west Jacksonville within the last month. I’m happy and proud to be one of the pediatricians helping to open one of the first offices here.
To describe my past a little bit: I was born in Sarasota, and spent much of my early childhood in that area. Over the next few decades, the demands of family, education and career would take me to many different parts of the country, including Louisiana, Tennessee, Texas, and New Jersey. But I’ve come full circle back to Florida.
When I was growing up, my family encouraged me to try to be anything I wanted to be. They made no specific demands other than that they wanted me to be able to support myself, to be happy, and do something that I’d be able to look back on with satisfaction in my old age.
Initially, I went into psychology. I was working in grant-based research, studying the social development of children with developmental disorders, which was rewarding. But by my early 30’s, I wanted something more personally satisfying in terms of directly helping children, which led me to my current career in medicine. I returned to school, and took the coursework necessary to qualify for the MCATs. I went to medical school, and then did my residency afterward, in New Jersey.
When I finished residency and was free to look anywhere, I was ready to return to my homeland – the Southeast. For the first 10 years I worked at SGHS, which is a hospital system in Brunswick, GA, right on the Florida-Georgia border. When my youngest left for college five years ago, I wanted to be closer to my elderly mother, who lived in Jacksonville, so that was a good time to relocate and finally come full circle back to Florida. She has since passed, but I don’t plan to move anywhere else. I’m here to stay.
Some of the things I love about Jacksonville are the gorgeous Florida skies, with the white, gray, pink and purple clouds at sunset; abundant access to fresh salt water and the fun that goes with them; the gorgeous swamplands with green, gold and rust colors and the white egrets standing in them; the huge freighters and cruise ships docked near the Dames Point Bridge; the kind people that surround me every day; and the fantastic food. My husband is a forester and a gardener, so we also love the fertile ground that allows him to grow the gorgeous flowers for which Florida is named. We have 6 beehives too, who also make good use of the flowers.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Becoming a doctor is of course demanding in every way. Not just for you, but also for your family and everyone you care about. I was married with two children who were very young when I started medical school, and I’ll always be so grateful to them for how supportive they all were over those years. There were some rotations when I cried in the shower because I had to leave the house before my children were awake, and come back after they were asleep. There were ball games, Trick-or-Treating and whole vacations that I missed.
However, the hard training is necessary. There’s so much to learn. Not just the material itself, but also things like how to work with a family who is angry or struggling with few resources, or how to think clearly even when you’re so tired that you have to hang on to the patient’s bed rail to stay upright. And it doesn’t last forever. The demands eased up after training finished, and there was, at last, more time to be with my family and return to something like normal hours.
We’ve been impressed with Bluebird Kids Health, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
What makes Bluebird Kids Health stand out is our goal to provide the very best medical care to any child that needs it. Bluebird originated in southern Florida, but has been expanding into Jacksonville this summer and fall. We’ve opened one office on Wilson Blvd. and are seeing patients there now. Another will open in Brentwood this October. Our mission is to place ourselves in underserved areas to ensure that children can get exemplary care, regardless of their financial situation.
In the last few years it’s been painful as a doctor to see the rise of larger and larger companies that emphasize profit over care, fostering misery in both patients and providers. I’m proud to be part of a company whose business model revolves around exceptional care for our small patients and enables us as pediatricians to provide it.
What quality or characteristic do you feel is most important to your success?
I think the characteristic most helpful for making it to any goal is determination. In medicine you have to persevere in your goals no matter what, because the obstacles are going to be bigger than anything you ever imagined. But for me, the rewards were also greater than anything I ever imagined. I’m now doing what I had set out to do: helping children be healthy and making a difference in their lives. Every day, through vaccines, antibiotics, asthma treatments, depression evaluations, and all the other things we do, pediatricians know we are saving lives, though we will never know which specific children. When an uncertain parent looks at me and says, “If you say to do this, then we will do it, because we trust you”, I always feel as though I have been handed a bar of gold. It’s heavy, and priceless.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.bluebirdkids.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bluebirdkidshealth/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bluebirdkidshealth/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/bluebird-kids/
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@bluebirdkidshealth
