When Memphians and those in the surrounding areas are faced with the trauma of a gunshot wound, life-threatening burn or car crash, chances are good that they’ll end up at The Regional Medical Center at Memphis.

For most of them, that visit is the difference between life and death.
Because of this, there is a scant degree of separation between most Memphians and The MED, said Tammie Ritchey, executive director of The MED Foundation.

“There are not too many people who haven’t been touched by The MED in Shelby County,” she said.

To do the work the doctors and nurses of the trauma unit perform, tending to patients in what is known as “the golden hour” – those 60 minutes when critical care is at its most urgent – a certain “grittiness,” as Ritchey put it, is needed.

This characteristic, she explained, is a can-do attitude, a willingness to roll up sleeves, dig their heels in and do the work that needs to be done.

“You need a little grit to get through stuff, a little something to get through the rough times,” she said.

Ritchey and her staff of two have had to dig their own heels in to raise the money that facilitates this good work.

The foundation is tasked with raising funds through direct contributions and grants to be used for capital equipment purchases, training for employees and scholarship funds for advanced nursing degrees and MED dependents going to school for health care. The foundation manages 40 active funds.

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