Lucy Marion, RN, Ph.D., FAAN, has been dean of the Medical College of Georgia Nursing School in Augusta since 2004. She left a faculty position at a nationally recognized community-based academic health center in Chicago to take a job closer to her family and roots.
But don't look for her behind a desk. Most likely, you'll find Marion with nursing students and faculty delivering health care wherever they find a need in the community.Exposing students to the realities of public health the community. is standard in public health curricula these days, but it wasn't when Marion started in the field.
"Taking students out of the hospital and into the community is something I've always done, even before I was teaching at the University of South Carolina (1968- 1993)," she said.
Marion would take students with her on home health visits, to clinics, into industries and to prisons, where they would deliver physical examinations to health care employees.
"Whatever I'm doing, I get my students involved. I've integrated teaching and practice so much that it's become an extension of me," she said.
An opportunity to establish a community-based academic health center in Chicago deepened her conviction. As head of the department of nursing at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Marion was able to merge three departments - mental health, public health and administration.
Wanting to start a clinic that would deliver services in mental and physical health, she began working with Thresholds, a psychological/social rehabilitation agency in Chicago.
"Their clients had mental illness and needed a physical once a year to get funding," she said. "I took another faculty member and began doing physicals and discovered that what they really needed was a primary care system."
The patients had a host of physical conditions, including diabetes, high blood pressure, asthma, sexually transmitted diseases and substance addictions.
Agency staff and health care faculty worked together to cut through red tape, get research grant funding and find volunteers. What evolved was a system of three (now four) health care centers that became a model of delivering on-site care to people with mental and physical needs.
"Many health care providers got involved, including family nurse practitioners, psychiatric nurse specialists, case workers, nutritionists, public health and mental health nursing students," she said.
Out of the system grew a program of foster care for children with mental illness, new guidelines for integrating diabetes and mental illness medications, education and well-baby exams for mentally challenged mothers, and outreach health care to homeless patients.
"My job was to write grants, bring in resources and fight for things like better reimbursement rates - be the cheerleader," Marion said. "For everyone involved, it was satisfying to make this kind of difference."
The experience taught Marion the value of integrating health care education so that students get crosstraining in mental and physical specialties.
"This project was a great way for students to learn the complexity of the health care system and to see how integrated care works," she said. "They saw a nursing model they could emulate and get excited about, because all of the nurses and other providers had such energy and dedication for what they were doing."
Marion sees many of the same health care needs in Georgia that she found in Chicago. They're just spread out among a more rural population.
"I felt like I could make a contribution here," she said. "MCG's president had a vision to improve health care for all, and the faculty seems open to my wild and crazy ideas of integrated care."
Marion recently received the 2005 Public Health Nurse Creative Achievement Award from the Public Health Nursing section of the American Public Health Association. The award recognizes creative contributions that enhance the quality of care for patients and the professional status of public health nurses.