By JAMES DOWD

Approaching his first anniversary as president of Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital, Trey Eubanks, MD, is thankful to be practicing a career he loves, and appreciative of those whose support made it all possible.

“This job is a huge honor and a tremendous responsibility, and it’s full of wonderful possibilities and opportunities to serve our community,” Eubanks said. “I was lucky enough to grow up in a place where you knew everyone’s name, and neighbors looked out for one another. That’s the kind of atmosphere we have at Le Bonheur, where I’m surrounded by people whose commitment to our patients and their families inspires me every single day.”

Eubanks said his upbringing prepared him for a service-oriented career, and he can’t imagine a much better childhood than what he experienced as a kid in smalltown Mississippi. The future pediatric surgeon grew up in Tunica, coming of age in an era before glittering casinos dotted the landscape of the tiny southern community.

His parents, both from Batesville, Mississippi, met in high school and graduated from the pharmacy program at Ole Miss before settling in Tunica to begin their careers and start a family. It was against this backdrop that Eubanks developed a sense of service and a commitment to helping those in need.

“When my parents finished school, they started looking around in small towns for a solo drug store that they could buy once the owner retired,” Eubanks said. “They found one in Tunica and our family enjoyed a way of life in a small Delta town that’s increasingly rare these days.”

For more than 40 years the Eubanks family owned that pharmacy in Tunica, where Eubanks worked when he wasn’t involved in sports-related activities such as playing on his high school football team. He learned the business inside and out, and the experience motivated the teenager to pursue a career that would allow him to take care of his neighbors in a similar way.

“I saw the importance of what my family did in our community, and I wanted to make a difference in peoples’ lives like they did,” Eubanks said. “After high school I enrolled in the pharmacy program at Ole Miss, and I assumed that would be my path. Then as I got closer to completing my degree, I decided to apply to med school so that I could become a doctor and go back to Tunica to take care of the people there.”

After earning his Bachelor of Science in Pharmacy, Eubanks entered the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson. After his first year in med school, an opportunity to work during the summer as an OR assistant with Tunica native Fred Rushton, MD,  shaped the course that Eubanks would pursue in medicine.

Shadowing Rushton, who was a general surgeon, and assisting in the hospital proved a watershed experience for the first-year med student. As a teen, Eubanks enjoyed taking apart and putting things back together, like household appliances and his family’s VCR. He loved building things with his hands and tinkering with his motorcycle to figure out ways to improve its performance. The idea of a career that allowed him to decipher medical puzzles and assemble treatment and surgical plans to make patients better appealed to his problem-solving nature.

“Surgery made sense to me, and it was a great fit. Everything about it just clicked,” Eubanks said. “Working with Dr. Rushton made a difference in how I looked at things, and I developed a passion for helping people who really needed it.”

During his third year in medical school, Eubanks further refined his career trajectory when he worked a rotation with pediatric surgeon Richard Miller, MD. Eubanks developed a deep connection with the young patients he saw daily, and over time his plans of returning to Tunica as a family physician began to shift. To pursue a practice focused on pediatric surgery, he would need to consider larger markets that offered such opportunities.

“I fell in love with pediatric surgery and that sealed it for me,” Eubanks said. “I knew that I couldn’t go home to practice because there wouldn’t be enough patients to sustain that kind of specialty, so I started looking at places where I could be part of a robust pediatric team.”

After earning a doctorate in medicine from UMMC, Eubanks completed his residency and research fellowship at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center. Next came a pediatric surgery fellowship at the University of Texas Southwestern in Children’s Medical Center of Dallas and subsequent decisions about where he wanted to live and work.

“There were a few people who tried to dissuade me from doing a pediatric fellowship because it would be hard to get in, hard emotionally because I’d be seeing sick children, and I would make no money,” Eubanks said. “But I felt called to this kind of work. I loved being around the kids and their parents and I wanted to give them a chance at a better life. I wanted to make a difference.”

While living in Dallas, Eubanks received offers from hospitals there and across the Southeast, but his heart was in Memphis and near his family. He eventually returned to the Bluff City and began at Le Bonheur, where he has served for more than two decades in roles of increasing responsibility.

Eubanks was named president of Le Bonheur in late 2023, serves as Surgeon-in-Chief and is UTHSC Professor of Surgery and Pediatrics and Chief of Pediatric Surgery. He is certified by the American Board of Surgery for general and pediatric surgery, is certified as an instructor for Advanced Trauma Life Support and Pediatric Acute Life Support.

“Le Bonheur really captured my heart because of what it did for kids, despite being a bit poor in resources at the time,” Eubanks said. “I had the incredible privilege of working with Meri Armour when she was CEO of Le Bonheur and worked to align doctors with the practice of the hospital,”

During his time working with Armour, Eubanks began to take on more administrative and leadership duties. He became the hospital’s trauma director in 2004 at about the same time Le Bonheur embarked on a major construction project.

“Meri Armour said that Le Bonheur should be a Level One trauma center for children and that was at a time when there wasn’t one in Tennessee, Arkansas, or Mississippi,” Eubanks said. “Under her leadership we got it done and I saw the impact it had on the quality of care for all patients. If you can take care of the direst cases of trauma patients, you can help every other patient. Working with her to make that vision a reality got me interested in leadership.”

Eubanks further developed his leadership capabilities when he led a team of healthcare providers in Haiti following the earthquake that devastated the region in 2010. While in Port-au-Prince, Eubanks spent a couple weeks as a trauma doctor taking care of patients, running the OR and overseeing hospital administrative duties.

“Working with that incredible team in Haiti gave me experience in a level of leadership that was invaluable. It was grueling work and full of challenges, but incredibly rewarding because of the positive impact we were able to offer the people who were affected by that tragedy,” Eubanks said. “When I returned to Le Bonheur I had an entirely different perspective on life and I was eager to continue to develop new skills. My career shifted a bit again and I started taking on more administrative and leadership responsibilities, which I found very rewarding.”

Eubanks was appointed interim CEO of Le Bonheur in March 2023, a role that he assumed permanently last December. He spends a great amount of time promoting the organization and recruiting medical personnel, while developing strategic plans for the hospital’s future.

As the father of five adult children – and grandfather to four youngsters – Eubanks is dedicated to making life better for kids. He wants to expand Le Bonheur’s cardiac, nephrology and pediatric surgery units, and improve access to care so that young patients can receive the treatment they need and return to regular activities as quickly as possible.

“Every day I hear stories about children who live somewhere that doesn’t offer the care and services they need, but they’re able to come here for treatment and they get to go home better,” Eubanks said. “As president of Le Bonheur, I can say unequivocally that the care we provide is second to none. We have experts from all over the world and our expertise is the best in the country. I’m privileged that I get to see that every day.”

Eubanks belongs to numerous professional affiliations, including serving as chair-elect on the board of the Trauma Center Association of America. He is a fellow of the American College of Surgeons, and a member of the Memphis Surgical Society, the Tennessee Emergency Medical Services for Children, the Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma, the American Pediatric Surgical Association, the Society of Critical Care Medicine, the Pediatric Trauma Society, and the American Association of Physician Leadership.

While serving as interim president, Eubanks oversaw Le Bonheur’s campaign that raised more than $12 million, presided over the opening of the Seacrest Studio that allows young patients to participate in radio, broadcast, and new media programming, and led the hospital to become the first in the state to achieve the Children’s Surgical Center Level I Verification. Now that his role is permanent, he is looking forward to even more exciting opportunities to improve medical care for the children in his community.

“Simply put, Le Bonheur is a fun place to work. I consider it a great honor to work with so many dedicated people to improve medical care for our patients,” Eubanks said. “I believe this is high calling and I know that everyone who works at Le Bonheur feels the same. This is vital work, and we can’t fail at what we do.”