A Place of Healing and Teaching
The hospital, now known as Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, opened its doors in May 1923. The idea of a hospital had been on the minds of the churches of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina since 1903 when an infirmary on the campus of Wake Forest College grew and expanded its care.
The convention’s annual meeting in 1919 came on the heels of a worldwide flu pandemic, and the group appointed a special commission to seek a location for North Carolina’s first Baptist hospital. The goal was to create a network of hospitals that would care for the state’s poorest and neediest patients.
The convention also intended for medical education to be a part of the new hospital’s mission, and a nursing school was established soon after the hospital opened. Medical education expanded further on the hospital’s campus in 1941 when Wake Forest College’s medical school moved from its campus in Wake Forest, N.C., to Winston-Salem.
Spiritual care was a motivating factor for the hospital’s founders and has been a hallmark of the hospital from the beginning. The hospital’s first superintendent (now known as president) was Rev. G.T. Lumpkin, a Baptist pastor who had served congregations in North Carolina and Virginia. Lumpkin was committed to providing spiritual care to patients, their families and staff. He also provided theological education to nurses to prepare them for their work in communities with local congregations.