By Lornet Turnbull
Special To The Medium
From the time she was a little girl, filling her grandmother’s pill boxes and fetching her insulin shots, Shaunece Jordan knew she wanted to be a nurse.
But the 24-year-old Tacoma woman, who will graduate with a bachelor’s degree in nursing from Seattle University in June, would tread a winding, rocky path to ultimately reach that goal.
There were mornings she’d be up by 3, walking the half hour or so to the Tacoma Dome to catch a bus that would get her to clinical rotations in Seattle.
In her junior year, Jordan was suspended after failing two courses, unexpectedly became pregnant at the start of her final year and for a while was homeless and couch-surfing to stay off the streets.
That she will walk across that stage in June despite these obstacles, is testament to her own perseverance, a great deal of help from a network of educators at Seattle University as well as from a sisterhood of women with the Mary Mahoney Professional Nurses Organization (MMPNO), whose mission is to support and help perpetuate the nursing profession among people of African heritage.
“This isn’t just a dream anymore,” Jordan said. “It’s real.”
She is among possibly hundreds of students and professionals who owe their education and careers in part to an organization founded 67 years ago as a social club for Black registered nurses in Seattle.
The 13 nursing pioneers named their organization in honor of Mary Eliza Mahoney, who, in 1879, became the first African-American nurse in the U.S.
The club was a source of networking and professional support at a time when discrimination in both employment and education was pervasive. Most eventually found work at Harborview, which at the time was the only hospital that would hire them.
Decades later, many of their successors would be inducted into the Washington State Nurses Association Hall of Fame, including Lois Price-Spratlen, who spent more than 30 years on the faculty of the School of Nursing at the University of Washington and 25 years as UW ombudsman.
In 2001 Price-Spratlen published a book, African American Registered Nurses in Seattle, about the struggles of industry pioneers and the group’s inaugural members. She established an endowment, the proceeds of which MMPNO uses to fund its scholarship program.
The group also hosts an annual reception to supplement those funds. This year’s event is scheduled for April 9.
Scholarship recipients are both men and women and increasingly, many are from African countries such as Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia.
“These students’ stories will tug at your heart,” said Gayle Robinson, president of the organization and assistant professor at Seattle U’s College of Nursing. “Often it was caring for a sick family member that catapults them into this profession.”
In addition to the financial support, MMPNO provides mentorship and professional development and encourages community service among its student, active and retired members.
Members and mentors offer career advice to young nurses. They provide support to students during the rough patches and feedback on school projects if asked. They have even accompanied students to the deans’ office when the occasion has warranted.
Robinson, herself a past scholarship recipient, said, “It’s the willingness on the part of our members to say, ‘you can do this,’ that has always stayed with me. “
“Yes, you have to study, you have to do the work and you have to show up,” she said. “But to have other women who are already nurses tell you to keep going, speaks volumes.”
MMPNO hosts an orientation each fall where students from nursing programs throughout the region can meet one another and network.
“They talk about their experiences, their challenges,” Robinson said, adding that first-year nursing students also get to talk to those in advanced-degree programs to learn what that is like.
“We know what it’s like to try to work and go to school and also contribute to the community,” she said.
MMPNO also strives to maintain strong connections to nursing programs at area colleges and universities so it can continue to support the success of African-American students overall.
For the first time last fall, it hosted a faculty orientation for deans and faculty members to discuss the progress of students and how members could better support them. It’s something they hope to repeat next year.
Across the country and in Washington state, aging baby boomers and a flood of new patients generated by health care reform, are driving a growing need for more nurses, as well as continued diversity.
“In health care, we want to help as many people as we can,” Robinson said. “But it really does matter when you see someone who looks like you taking care of you, or taking care of your mother. Somewhere in that, it matters.”
Those who have received scholarships from MMPNO often say that what the organization provides is more valuable than money.
Joycelyn Thomas was awarded a scholarship in 1996, in the spring of her senior year at the UW as she was completing a bachelor’s degree program in nursing.
More than a decade earlier, after graduating from high school in Federal Way, she had enrolled in a pre-med program at the UW but left within a year to get married and raise a family. Thomas returned in 1992 and was accepted into the nursing program, juggling school, a full-time job and raising five young children.
The financial help from MMNPO came at a desperate time, when a knee injury prevented her from working. But she said the moral and practical support she received from the women over the years has meant even more.
“These are African-American nurses who have been through it and they know and understand what we are going through – in school and in the work setting,” Thomas said.
“You don’t have to explain to them how you are feeling; they get it,” she said. “It’s in the networking, in that family is where the benefit comes.”
Meanwhile, for Jordan, who will be the first in her immediate family to receive a college degree, the organization played an even more vital role.
From an early age, she knew she’d go to college, though she was never as certain how she’d pay for it. She supplemented the Mary Mahoney scholarship she received in her sophomore and junior years with other scholarships and student loans.
But after failing two pharmacological courses, she was suspended, in the winter of her junior year, losing that year’s scholarship.
“That took a lot out of me; I felt like I had failed…” Jordan said.
Still, MMPNO continued to support her. The women encouraged her to keep going, to write to the dean and make her case for reinstatement. Her Mary Mahoney mentor even accompanied her to the meeting and helped her draft a plan for how she was going to get back on track, which included taking courses at then-Seattle Central Community College and auditing some foundational classes at Seattle U.
The organization came to her rescue again last fall, paying off a tuition balance from the previous year so she could enroll for her final year.
As she began that final march to her degree, unsure how she would even pay for the upcoming year, she confronted a new challenge: she was pregnant. A falling out with her own family left her living in a hotel while trying to go to school.
“I couldn’t even see how I was going to be able to continue school,” she said. “I felt like I had let so many people down. I was gonna be the one in the family to end the cycle: I was going to get a degree, get married and have a family.”
A team of educators at Seattle U, determined to see Jordan succeed, went to work on her behalf. They secured on-campus housing and covered her tuition in full for her final year.
Her baby is due in May and she plans eventually to pursue a doctor of nursing practice (DNP) degree.
“I owe them this, these wonderful people who have removed these hurdles,” she said. “They put their necks on the line for me and I don’t want to let them down.”
