N. Dakotan is Obama pick for federal health post

or

“On Friday, President Obama appointed [Mary] Wakefield to oversee the Health Resources and Services Administration, which helps to deliver health care to the uninsured and underserved through Community Health Centers around the country.

“Trained as a nurse, Wakefield, 54, earned a Ph.D. at the University of Texas and has become, according to a White House statement Friday, one of the nation’s top experts on rural health care. She is now director of the Center for Rural Health at the University of North Dakota.

“Before returning to her native North Dakota in 2002, she was director of the Center for Health Policy, Research and Ethics at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va…

“Her professional and political credentials are not all that recommend her for the new job, the Grand Forks Herald noted in a congratulatory editorial today. She also brings “humility, of the kind known only by those whose lives have been touched by great tragedy.”

In 2005, a brother and two of his children were killed in a crash on Interstate Hwy. 94 outside the Twin Cities when another vehicle crossed the median and struck their van head-on. Wakefield’s sister-in-law and a surviving nephew were badly injured.

For a time, she later wrote, her work in rural health care didn’t seem to matter anymore. But nurses around the country responded. “This community of caring from the best of caregivers — from nurses — meant something,” she wrote…”

i totaly digg the old school uniforms with the hat and the pin to go with it…

(my wifes a nurse and she just rolled her eyes)

Nurses can improve our nation’s health. Let’s get the ball rolling by working to establish the Office of the National Nurse….