2005 Super Star in Community Nursing Award Winner

Wardlaw has a great passion for serving adolescents in the predominantly African American neighborhood in which she serves. In fact, for the vast majority of her patients at the Hugginnie Crane Adolescent Health Center , administered by Rush University College of Nursing and run in collaboration with the Cook County Ambulatory and Community Health Network, Wardlaw is their first contact and often their only available access to health care. The students Wardlaw serves come to the center with complaints ranging from everyday headaches and stomach pains to more serious medical issues such as appendicitis and unplanned pregnancy. Wardlaw is known for relating to and respecting the students she serves and has become a trusted authority within the school. Through Wardlaw’s dedication and commitment to helping battle teen pregnancy at Crane, her center has seen a rapid decline in teen pregnancies, down from 60 in 1994 to only 9 in 2005. In addition, Wardlaw is also very committed to the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), and has witnessed a steady decline of Chlamydia from 16% of the center’s patients to 12% over the past four years.

Never one to sit idle, Carol Palmer Wardlaw has also been instrumental in the organization and development of the Illinois Coalition for School Health Centers and has played a major role in recruiting members and establishing this organization throughout the state. The Coalition’s mission is to improve the physical and mental health status of Illinois youth by providing access to quality health care through the development, stabilization and expansion of school-based and linked health centers. Wardlaw’s efforts have not gone unnoticed. This May, she received the first-ever “Advocate of the Year” award from the ICSHC for her advocacy work to promote the need for and benefits from school health centers. She is also active in supporting the National Assembly for School Health Care and has helped to train school health center staff throughout the country.

Wardlaw also takes very seriously her position as a role model to health practitioner students and, since 1996, has served as a Practitioner/Teacher for Rush University College of Nursing in Chicago.

“Year after year, we are amazed by the caliber of the Super Star Nurse award nominees, and this year was no exception,” said Robert DiLeonardi, Executive Director of the VNA Foundation of Chicago. “During the finalist interviews, Carol Palmer Wardlaw’s very impressive credentials matched her strong commitment and passion. After hearing firsthand about her dedication to ensuring quality health care for the adolescents she serves at the Huginnie Crane Adolescent Health Center, it was evident to our selection panel that she was most deserving of this recognition. Carol is a remarkable inspiration to others who are considering a career in community nursing.”

Growing up with her parents and three siblings in downstate rural Pembroke Township, Wardlaw always knew she wanted to become a nurse. Her earliest memory of caring for “patients” was extracting splinters from her siblings’ fingers and diagnosing and treating the occasional playground scrapes and bumps. When Wardlaw was 19, she read a newspaper article about Cook County School of Nursing and wrote the school to inquire about the profession.

The school urged young Wardlaw to enroll and shortly thereafter she was accepted and began earning her nursing diploma. Upon graduating the school’s three-year program, Wardlaw started her first job as a staff nurse at Mt. Sinai Hospital where she also served as the hospital’s diabetes educator. In that position, she helped newly diagnosed patients cope with and manage their diabetes thus beginning her long career as a patient educator and advocate.

After 8 years at Mt. Sinai, Wardlaw went back to school to pursue a Bachelors of Nursing at DePaul University. There she met a professor who suggested she pursue nurse practitioner training at the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh. Upon receiving her Masters degree, Wardlaw worked for more than a decade as a family nurse practitioner at Winfield Moody Community Health Center in the Cabrini Green neighborhood offering prenatal, well women and family planning care to predominantly African American and Hispanic women. A colleague at Winfield Moody recommended Wardlaw to the medical director at Huginnie Crane Adolescent Health Center in 1993, where she has been employed ever since.

School-based health centers across the country are facing huge deficits as a result of the health care crisis, and many are closing their programs. Huginnie Crane Adolescent Health Center has been faced with these same challenges. Because the high school health center is one of just three on the west side of Chicago and the need for care is high, Wardlaw continues to be an advocate for the youth she sees daily and has worked with school administrators to find a way to keep the program going despite ongoing budget cuts.

“I am truly honored and amazed to win this award from the VNA Foundation and very thankful for all they do to promote community health nursing,” said Wardlaw. “I absolutely love my job helping care for students, so to receive $25,000 is just a complete blessing. I know that I’m not the only one doing this type of work — there are a lot of nurses in Chicago working hard to ensure better health for children — so I’m truly humbled by this recognition.”

“Each of our finalists this year demonstrated outstanding creativity, advocacy and clinical care, but Carol’s story truly stood out from all the rest,” said DiLeonardi. “We are honored to acknowledge the incredible service of all five of these nurses and the important role they play in providing much-needed nursing care to our local communities. This award was created to promote the importance of community nursing and hopefully encourage more young people to pursue it as a career option and serve communities that desperately need the support.”

According to the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO), nearly 130,000 nursing positions are unfilled today and that number is expected to skyrocket as 78 million aging Baby Boomers begin placing unprecedented demands on America ‘s health care system. The nurse staffing problem is today a major factor in emergency department overcrowding, cancellation of elective surgeries, discontinuation of clinical services, and the limited ability of the health system to respond to any mass casualty incident. In addition, 90 percent of nursing homes report an insufficient number of nurses to provide even the most basic care, and some home health agencies are being forced to refuse new admissions. While there are currently shortages of other health care personnel, nurses are the primary source of care and support for patients at the most vulnerable points in their lives. Nearly every person’s health care experience involves a registered nurse. Birth and death, and all the various forms of care in between, are attended by the knowledge, support and comfort of nurses.

The VNA Foundation of Chicago’s 2005 Super Star in Community Nursing Award is intended to acknowledge the service that Public Health/Community Health nurses provide, recognize the value of nursing in the community, help attract young people to the profession and contribute to efforts to decrease the nursing shortage.

“As growing numbers of elderly Americans require health care services, and as more underinsured families and children turn to community-based health services and clinics, we want to highlight the importance of community health nursing,” said DiLeonardi. “By promoting this award and the dedicated individuals being honored, we hope to appeal to young people and encourage them to consider public health nursing as a career choice.”

Wardlaw and four finalists were chosen by an all-volunteer, independent panel of community health experts, including longtime physician, public health activist and radio commentator Quentin Young, M.D.; Kane County Health Department Executive Director Mary Lou England; and others.

From 1890 to 1995, the VNA of Chicago employed its own nurses and other health professionals to provide health care to the underprivileged. Since 1995, the VNA Foundation has operated exclusively as a grant making foundation, giving financial support to nonprofit organizations offering home- and community-based care to the medically underserved. In 2004, the VNA Foundation distributed 49 grants totaling $1,812,833 in support of its mission to increase home and community-based health services for Chicago ‘s medically underserved. Recipients of the grants include a variety of agencies providing health care and health services to the homeless, the working poor and the disenfranchised.