Access Urgent Care

 Born and raised in Grand Lake, Louisiana, Samantha Poole Marceaux is proud to serve the medical community of Southwest Louisiana. Her areas of expertise include emergency medicine, hospital medicine, urgent care, and occupational medicine. Her central belief in healthcare is that medicine should be affordable and accessible for everyone. Patients should never have to wait and worry about their health concerns or watch their loved ones suffer in discomfort. Samantha devotes her time and energy to making sure that every patient she encounters is seen, heard, and treated like family. 

Samantha’s willingness to work hard to help others is inherited from her family of entrepreneurs. Her late grandfather, Richard Poole, started Poole Roofing in 1975. When Samantha thinks about what hard work means, she thinks of how her grandfather never stopped until a job was done “just right.” Her parents, Daryl and Becky Poole, now serve as her examples for how hard work has more to do with helping a community than with helping yourself. Her dad, for example, will rise before dawn, come home after dark, and yet still stop to help a stranger on the side of the road. Samantha is determined to bring their legacy into the next generation through her work as a nurse practitioner. 

After graduating from McNeese State University with an undergraduate degree in nursing, Samantha worked as a medical and cardiovascular intensive care nurse for six years. She went on to earn a Master’s of Science in Nursing at McNeese in 2015 to become a family nurse practitioner. She is also now a Certified Medical Examiner through the Department of Transportation. Samantha remains an active member of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners, Louisiana Association of Nurse Practitioners, Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society, and Sigma Theta Tau Honor Society. 

 Throughout her twelve years in the medical field, Samantha has dreamed of being in a leadership position and becoming her own boss. While working at Lake Charles Memorial Hospital, she met Dr. Robert Bernauer Jr. After developing a friendship, she and Bernauer, talked about long-term goals of opening their own urgent care. On October 11, 2021, this dream became reality when they opened the doors to Access Urgent Care. 

Located on 1530 E. McNeese Street, Access Urgent Care offers a different urgent care experience for patients in Southwest Louisiana. Over the last year, Samantha and Bernauer have worked with local architects to design a state-of-the-art facility that includes digital X-ray, a modern laboratory, and a large number of exam rooms. The result of their facility design allows them to provide patients with an experience known as “direct bedding,” which places patients directly into an exam room rather than sitting in a waiting room. 

Both Samatha and Bernauer draw upon their decades of emergency room experience to run Access Urgent Care at an efficient speed that never sacrifices expert levels of care. Their urgent care promises to provide affordable, dependable care for patients in Southwest Louisiana who face increasing insurance premiums, overbooked family clinics, and long wait times. Their team of talented healthcare providers shares three core values: quality, dependability, and accessibility. 

 Samantha is proud to be a local, female business owner in Lake Charles. She is even more proud to raise two beautiful daughters, Stella and Eloise, with husband Jacob Marceaux. She spends the majority of her spare time chasing toddlers and their Maltese, Wrigley. She also enjoys fitness and is currently training to run a half marathon.