COO Melina Arrowood Lets Grief Inspire Empathy in Her Worklife
By Meg Hale Brunton
Last Fall, Mission Hospital opened a new campus of its hospital, Sweeten Creek Mental Health and Wellness Center (SCMHWC) in Asheville, North Carolina. After two years overseeing the construction aspect of the new 82,000 sq. ft. facility, Chief Operating Officer (COO) Melina Arrowood is finally getting to actually see the effect the new space has on its residents. “This place really takes it up a few notches. It gives me great joy, walking around and seeing the patients here,” Arrowood says. “Being here makes them feel important and valuable. Just seeing how they respond to the different environment proves that the space affects the whole experience, which is so cool to watch come alive.”
Always interested in going into the medical field, Arrowood knew she wanted to become a nurse after a car accident dramatically changed her life. As a teenager, Arrowood was visiting her older cousin and her two small children in Kentucky. During the visit, they were involved in a head-on collision that claimed the life of her cousin and her new baby. Arrowood was pulled from the car and taken to the hospital. “I don’t remember what tests I had run on me after the accident, but I do remember the nurse that sat with me while I was waiting for my parents,” Arrowood recalls. “That whole experience really drove me towards healthcare. It created this space in me that gives me the ability to be more empathetic with others. When something like that happens in your life, you’re faced with a choice of which path you’re going to let it take you down. It can destroy you or it can help you grow. I let it thrust me forward into thinking about things differently.”
A mother at 19, Arrowood attended night classes and got her associate’s degree from South College. By the time she completed her Master’s degree at Western Governors University, she was a mother of four girls. She began her career as an ER Tech and secretary for Mission Hospital in 2007. “I loved being an ER nurse; it is truly the frontlines of medicine. It is a mixed bag, for sure, but it was an incredible experience,” she recalls. From there, Arrowood became a bedside nurse, then was promoted to team lead, followed by nursing supervisor, then manager.
Arrowood explains that her experiences working in a hospital helped her to cope with the grief of losing her cousin. “There was some peace for me,” she says of her work. “It is easy to forget that the person on the stretcher is experiencing something very traumatic for them. It was therapeutic in a way for me to be able to interact with families and patients, making sure that they felt comforted and that they saw kind eyes and had somebody to hold their hand.” Arrowood says that things that connect you to the patient, like a soft touch and a positive affirmation, are just as important as the medical skills, because they keep the patient from feeling vulnerable, scared and alone.
In 2014, Arrowood accepted a position as operations leader for Transylvania Regional Hospital in Brevard. In her two years there, she also served as Interim President and CNO. In 2016, she returned to Mission Hospital as Director of Acute Care Nursing. In 2018, Arrowood made the move to Mission’s Behavioral Health department. In her role as COO at SCMHWC, Arrowood is essentially responsible for anything related to the facility, from environmental services, to food and nutrition, to staffing the physicians. “Whatever this place needs me to be is what I am,” she says. “It’s my responsibility to provide my staff with what they need so they can take really good care of our patients.”
One of the goals that Arrowood champions in her role at the center is speaking openly about mental health issues and helping to remove the societal stigma that often seems to accompany them. “Mental health needs touch all of us. Every one of us either struggles ourselves, or knows someone who struggles,” she says. “For some reason, if you have a mental health need, you’re supposed to be quiet, or be ashamed, which I refuse to do. We should be able to speak openly about mental health needs, like any other health need and get the same support. We have to make the care accessible, but also break down the stigma associated with getting help.”
Besides her work as a nurse and COO, Arrowood is a successful blogger. She began blogging as a way to keep her extended family updated on their lives, with her blog Our Front Door. One night, after a particular rough shift in the ER, she blogged about her experiences as a nurse. She was shocked when the blog was shared more than 200,000 times. The same thing happened when she blogged about her experiences as a trauma nurse, coming from a background of trauma. Then, she wrote a piece on being the wife of a paramedic that was picked up and published by The Huffington Post and read a couple million times. “What I am most proud of is that it seems to have touched a lot of people,” Arrowood says of her blogging. “I’m a voice for others, and helping others articulate their emotions. Other people feel connected to that, and felt like I was sharing what they didn’t know how to share with the world.”
Now 39, Arrowood feels extremely gratified by the work she does at SCMHWC. “It feeds different parts of my soul,” she says. The new $70 million facility boasts extensive outdoor activity areas, including basketball courts, gardening areas, and a youth playground. Though aspects of her past were painful, Arrowood feels that her grief has made her uniquely-qualified to help the patients under her care. “It has served me well. I show up as authentically me, and find my path as I go. Being able to understand human experience a little more on such a deep level, I think, gives me some insight into why people may struggle. Everybody’s got a story that we don’t know about. So, I choose kindness and grace any chance that I can.”
