W
hen Teresa Fadden, Grad ’80, was a first-year nursing student in South Dakota, one of her professors said, “I’d rather pick my nurse than my physician.” The comment puzzled her at the time. But after 40 years in the profession, she understands it completely. “Nurses spend the most time with patients and make decisions that will impact their health. Most nurses are ethical, moral people who want to do the right thing,” Fadden says, not surprised in the least that year after year nursing tops the list as the nation’s most trusted profession. A concern for pursuing social justice through nursing runs through her career, as does an involvement with Catholic institutions including Marquette, Mount Marty College in South Dakota and St. Joseph Hospital, the Wheaton Franciscan facility where she has worked for the past 32 years. After moving to Milwaukee from South Dakota in the early 1970s as a newly minted R.N., Fadden spent a year caring for indigent patients at the former Milwaukee County General Hospital. The experience inspired her to join the city of Milwaukee’s then-100-member-strong corps of public health nurses working in public schools and central city neighborhoods and clinics. At the time, these nurses were also responsible for delivering birth certificates to young mothers. “We would see every newborn and then check on the babies periodically and help teach the new mothers,” she says. Today, at least 40 percent fewer public health nurses work in Milwaukee, and Fadden wonders if we devote sufficient resources to health education and prevention. “So many of the
problems I see now could be prevented — such as obesity, the effects of tobacco, high blood pressure, diabetes, stroke,” she says. In 1978, Fadden saw an opportunity to pursue a master’s degree in nursing at Marquette, which opened the door to a position at St. Joseph’s as a clinical nurse specialist in chronic illnesses. That led to her position as a clinical instructor at Marquette and involvement with the St. Joseph Nursing Research Council. Fadden today continues the three-pronged track. “It’s very stimulating — providing direct patient care, teaching the next generation of nurses the value of service to others and professional research,” she says. “It’s the best of all worlds.” But it’s still the interaction with patients that is exceptionally rewarding. As a staff nurse in a large cardiac, pulmonary and thoracic surgery clinic at St. Joseph’s, she usually is assigned to four or five patients each shift. Responsibilities run the gamut, from administering medications and reviewing lab and diagnostic test reports to prepping patients for tests and surgery and coordinating patient care with other disciplines such as physical therapists, clinical dieticians and physicians. “Advocating for the patient and family is something I am called on to do almost every time I work,” she says. The professional and personal payback comes in the form of the statements of appreciation she hears daily from patients: You made me feel better. I’m having less pain now. You made a difference for me. “That commitment to service for others is so apparent where I work, and it’s very much in line with the Jesuit tradition,” she says. ✤
Teresa Fadden
Dan Johnson
(right) Staff nurse Wheaton Franciscan St. Joseph Hospital, Milwaukee