Finding Calling in the Darkness

November 6, 2025

Mountain Mover: Allie Jones Bailey ’23

by Teresa Buckner, Director of Publications

Allie Bailey, at work in the Trauma ICU

As a nurse in the Trauma Intensive Care Unit of Mission Hospital, Allie Jones Bailey ’23 sees people in pain every day, with injuries ranging from relatively minor to catastrophic.

She has learned to comfort when she can. And she has learned to put her emotions aside when necessary to make rational decisions for medical care. She functions as a capable professional in the often adrenalin-fueled atmosphere that she calls “organized chaos.”

And she loves it.

“I love working in the trauma ICU,” she said. “And I love people. I love taking care of people.”

When Allie graduated from MHU’s Judge-McRae School of Nursing (JMSON) in 2023, she was already a Certified Nurse Assistant at Mission Hospital. Her completed Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree opened the door for her to move seamlessly into a full-time nursing position.

When her brother, Austin, who is also a nurse, encouraged her to “get out of her comfort zone,” by working in trauma, she was hesitant at first.

“I said, ‘there’s no way that I can handle that!’” but with her brother’s continued encouragement, she tried it and quickly found her niche.

Though seeing people in pain can be difficult emotionally, Allie said her job also allows her to see the amazing resiliency of the human body.

“I think about how incredible and resilient our bodies are, how much they can endure and still work.” She said. “I’ve seen patients who had a traumatic accident, and I wondered, ‘how in the world are they ever going to walk again?’ And then three days later, with physical therapy, they’re up and standing.”

At this point in her life, Allie said she feels very certain that she is fulfilling her calling. But the certainty of that calling grew from one of the darkest times in her young life.

“My grandfather, who I was really close to, was diagnosed with dementia when I was in high school, and so my family took care of him during my high school years,” she said.

By the time Allie was a junior in high school, she was filling the role of a nurse for her grandfather, guided by her brother. Allie was inspired, not just by his example, but also by the work of the hospice nurses who took care of her grandfather closer to his death.

“Those nurses not only took care of him, but they took care of us as a family,” she said.

Those experiences, Allie said, showed her the importance of nursing and pushed her to pursue it herself. When she decided to come to Mars Hill University, she had already made the decision that nursing would be her major.

“I said to myself, ‘yeah, that’s how I want to be a nurse. I’m not just taking care of a patient, I’m taking care of the whole family as a unit,’” she said.

Allie first considered Mars Hill because it was faith-based and close to her home in Leicester. But once she got on campus, she found an atmosphere where she felt cared for as a whole person. And in the JMSON, she found a close-knit program that helped her to thrive.

“It’s definitely a close-knit program. You learn to become very close with your fellow students and faculty and staff. You’re pretty much stuck together for two years, and it seems like you are studying every hour of the day. I mean, this program takes over your life for a little while.”

The nursing school was all the more challenging due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, which had discontinued a lot of in-person learning. Allie’s class was the first to go back to in-person clinicals in the local hospitals.

“Clinicals were a little bit different because we were all just coming out of the worst of the pandemic. And so it was a relearning year for us students, relearning for staff, relearning for the university as a whole.”

The difficulty, however, made Allie all the closer to the nursing faculty and her fellow students. “We got really close, and it was good. We had to lean on each other a lot to get through,” she said.

Although her nursing education was time-consuming, Allie was active as a student-leader in Fellowship of Christian Athletes with her then-boyfriend, Trevor Bailey. Trevor and Allie married in the fall of 2024. The two now live in Leicester. Trevor is a teacher at Erwin Middle School and a coach at Erwin Middle School and Erwin High School.

Looking back, Allie believes that God used the awful time of her grandfather’s decline and death to awaken in her a desire to care for others. And she believes that He led her to Mars Hill, where she was the recipient of the kind of “whole person” caring that she now tries to bring into her nursing.

“I don’t just care about my patients and what physically is going wrong with them. I would rather them remember me as someone that made them feel safe and comfortable, and acknowledged and loved and cared for. Sometimes that’s even more important than the physical part,” she said.

[This article appeared in the fall 2025 issue of Mars Hill: The Magazine.]