Photos by BARRY WILLIAMS/Special (ENLARGE)

Adria Francois, Gina Zeidman, Ann Connor, Tracy Whittaker and Mindi Fry (from left) pose in front of the first site of Grady Memorial Hospital. Connor likes to take her students' education outside the classroom.

(ENLARGE)

Ann Connor, top three finalist for the third annual ajcjobs Nursing Excellence awards.

Ann Connor teaches community health nursing by example. Connor, a professor at Emory University's Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing, takes her students to the places where she practices, such as Café 458, a reservation-only restaurant in Atlanta, where homeless people can order meals and receive social services.

Connor, 53, and her husband, A.B. Short, co-founded the café in 1988 with his friend Bob Freeman.

She has taken students to deliver primary care to migrant workers in Moultrie. She has helped out at the Gateway Center in Atlanta, which treats homeless patients who have acute or chronic illnesses and keeps them from being discharged from the hospital to the street.

Treating patients for ailments that include renal failure, diabetes, sickle-cell anemia and other chronic conditions has given Connor an upclose picture of the complexity of homelessness.

"So many are walking sick and yet invisible," said Connor, MSN, APRN-BC, FNP.

When she was in nursing school at the University of Alabama, Connor planned to work in a hospital intensive-care unit. But during her junior year, professors invited her to participate in a pilot nurse-practitioner program that delivered nursing services in rural Alabama.

"It was providential. I felt so at home nursing in that setting," Connor said. "The needs were right in front of me, and I decided to take a different path."

She has cared for vulnerable patients for almost 30 years.

"I see in my students what I have continued to learn about the homeless population," she said. "These are just people. Being homeless is part of their story, but not their whole story."

When students first walk into Café 458, they often are apprehensive, but as they share meals and make connections with the guests, the fear usually melts away.

"Too often, we put people's circumstances in a box and make assumptions. Knowing people's stories changes things," Connor said.

Connor invites her students to look at what it means to be a healer in a broader scope. She believes that her students will take what they learn in the community back to traditional nursing settings. She hopes it will transform and deepen their practice.

"These students are called into nursing at a time when the health care system needs change, and as they see opportunities, they have the drive, the skills and the passion to do something. I'm encouraged by their potential to reshape how we deliver care," she said.

In nominating Connor for the award, Emory student nurse Crystal Bailey wrote that when you ask students "who they think of as an inspiring nurse, an innovative educator, a servant leader, an inspiration, a gentle heart and a great mentor — they will tell you 'Ann Connor.'

"Ann has inspired countless student nurses like me to embrace the true heart of nursing-caring service to the vulnerable."