What is your current health care position? What are your responsibilities in this position?
I am a mental health rehab nurse with Black Alcoholics Substance Information Center (BASIC), where I work on rehab health issues, make referrals, follow up with any medical problems as part of the recovery process.
And I am a school nurse with St. Louis Public Schools, where I implement routines for daily care – first aid, administering medications, compliance with immunizations. I am part of the health team. If a student needs an individual education plan, I would be the medical component. Now we are trying to prepare for a possible return in August, so I am working on the leadership dynamic for health and safety.
How do you feel you are able to make a difference in this position?
I am the medical component, and each person within their own area of specialty combines to make better, more effective plans of care.
Health care is a team sport. Tell us about your team and how they help you succeed.
There is the principal, who is our leader, and social services, family care support specialists, and counselors. Along with the other team members, we all are important to mental, physical and psychosocial leadership and guidance.
COVID-19 has disrupted all of our work and lives. How has it disrupted your work, and how are you adapting?
It has strengthened my knowledge of Zoom for follow-ups and team meetings. I have had to make phone calls to talk to parents. Now we are setting up immunization clinics in hopes that parents will respond. Usually we just send papers home with the student. It has forced drastic changes in our attempts to provide good health care.
Mentors are crucial to the development of a successful professional. Tell us about a mentor and how that person guided you.
I have been a nurse for 46 years, so my mentors in the early days of nursing were black physicians. Dr. Andrew Spencer would always tell me, “Nurse, stay focused.” He would hand-walk me and talk to me. Judge Edwards, when I was at his school, Innovative Concept Academy – he had a principal, but he ran that school – he had a structure that moved me. And Robin Smith, the program director at BASIC, told me, “Nurse, you’ve got to remember your clientele.” A lot of our staff are recovering addicts, but I never, ever used drugs.
Do you have a previous position that helped prepare you for this work? If so, tell us about that.
I was one of the first black nurses who went to work at Washington University. I worked as a clinical research nurse when there were only two black nurses there. And I was a travel nurse in California for five years. It was so shocking. I worked in mental health, so I encountered a lot of drug-induced psychosis that prepared me for BASIC.
Tell us about your experiences as a student that prepared you for this work.
As a young high school graduate, I went straight to nursing school at the St. Louis Municipal School of Nursing. We were St. Louis City Hospital Number 2 School of Nursing, which became the Homer G. Phillips Hospital School of Nursing, but then they merged in 1969. When they knew you came from City Hospital, they would say, “Give her a job,” so I got a job in the Emergency Room at Homer G. Phillips.
Missouri voters have an opportunity to expand Medicaid with Amendment 2 on the August 4 ballot. Expand Medicaid in Missouri – yes or no? Why or why not?
Yes, I think we should.
Is there anything about your personal life that you would like to share with the public celebrating your award?
I have always been from the North Side, North City. I live in North City. I get up in the morning and walk the streets, pick up trash. We have flowers on our streets. I rode bicycles everywhere I went until I was 32 years old.
