By DEB GRUVER

Staff writer

Nurse practitioner Teresa Pearson joked with members of St. Luke Hospital Auxiliary that she was glad to meet them but hoped she wouldn’t see them too often.

“Hopefully, you don’t get to know me really well, because again, I’m in the ER,” she said.

Pearson was one of three new — or newish — St. Luke staff members the auxiliary introduced at a welcome luncheon Thursday. It was the first time the group had broken bread — in this case, Subway bread — since COVID-19.

Pearson told a packed room that her first ambulance “looked like the ‘Ghostbusters’ ambulance and even sounded like it.”

She worked as a flight nurse for years and, in 2007, survived a helicopter crash.

“I bounce well from 500 feet,” she said.

Pearson told auxiliary members she’s smitten with the Marion community.

Casey McNeil and Ryan Weir, physicians at St. Luke, also expressed an affinity for small-town health care.

McNeil began practicing in September. Weir began last fall.

“I’ve had a great experience here in the last year,” Weir said.

He works at the hospital, clinic and emergency room. He will be working more in wound care as he expands skills in that area, he said.

McNeil moonlighted in the emergency room for a 1½ years before becoming a full-time — and more — physician for St. Luke. He works in family practice and in the ER.

Both graduated from medical school at the University of Kansas in Wichita.

Hospital chief executive Jeremy Ensey hopes to next attract new radiology technicians to the hospital.

“That’s one of our immediate needs,” he said.

He praised the auxiliary for its work.

“We can’t do what we do without the auxiliary,” he said.