What do an intensive care nurse, a professor, a researcher, a home health nurse, a Peace Corps medical officer and a U.S. embassy nurse practitioner have in common? A lot, when they’re all rolled up into one person.
Linda Grabbe, Ph.D., APRN-BC, is a clinical assistant professor at Emory University’s Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing. She’s also a family nurse practitioner at the Community Advanced Practice Nurses Clinic for Homeless Women and Children in Atlanta.
A nurse for 30 years, Grabbe has worked at Emory since 2005. Before she came to Emory, Grabbe worked all over the globe. Her curriculum vitae reads like an atlas; she has worked at hospitals, universities and organizations in Georgia, North Carolina, Washington, D.C., Hawaii and Massachusetts. And that doesn’t include her stints as a Peace Corps medical officer in Kazakhstan and a U.S. embassy nurse practitioner in West Africa.
Grabbe was nominated for the ajcjobs Nursing Excellence Awards by Jasmine Hoffman, director of communications at Emory’s Nursing School. Hoffman praised her devotion to working with homeless women and children.
“Linda Grabbe represents nursing at its finest,” she wrote. “She has devoted her entire nursing career to serving vulnerable populations, particularly homeless women, children, teens and young adults... [Her] dedication to underserved populations in Atlanta is remarkable.”
Grabbe first started working with vulnerable populations when she volunteered with Community Advanced Practice Nurses (CAPN), a nurse-led clinic for homeless women, children and young adults in Atlanta. What began as a way to prepare for her nurse practitioner board exams quickly became a passion.
“I have never wanted to work in any other setting because there is so much we can do for this population,” Grabbe said.
Community Advanced Practice Nurses provides free physical, mental and preventive care to the homeless and medically underserved. The nonprofit’s holistic approach and presence in shelters throughout the city are what make it effective, Grabbe says.
“We are able to be right where the women and children are,” she said. “Instead of limiting the clinical encounter to a single health problem, we try to address as many problems as possible, since it might be the only health care the patient has had in many years, and we may never see her again.
“A simple tuberculosis test turns into an array of other problems as we get the health history and we try our best to address the medical, dental, vision and psychiatric needs which have popped up.”
Grabbe, who teaches Emory University nursing students during their psychiatric/mental health rotations, feels herself being “pulled into mental health care, because that is the biggest need I see.”
She believes there is a deep connection between the abuse, neglect, substance abuse and the physical and mental health problems that often plague homeless people.
“There is a reason people use drugs, and in many, many cases the drugs actually help people deal with psychic pain,” she said. “We could be doing a lot to prevent mental illness and addiction by working with underserved youth now, before they get into drugs too deep.”
Grabbe has been touched by the lives of those she has served.
“I have the utmost respect for the adolescents and women in the shelters,” she said. “The women have nothing materially — sometimes all their worldly possessions are in a couple of plastic bags — but they often manage to maintain humor, great dignity, kindness towards others, and even appreciation of what little they have. They have dreams and hope, and they all want jobs.”
Grabbe also devotes some of her energy to research. With the help of Emory nursing student Scott Nguy, she taught eight sessions of mindfulness meditation to more than 70 adolescents at Covenant House Georgia, a nonprofit that serves homeless youths. The idea was to give them the tools to promote resilience and spirituality, and techniques they could apply to their lives.
“Many of the kids loved the meditation practice and felt that it gave them a sense of calm and balance,” she said. “The research showed a drop in psychological symptoms and an increase in measures of spirituality, resilience and mental well-being.”
For Grabbe and her students, serving the homeless has been an eye-opening experience.
“There are many people who are homeless because of mental illness,” she said. “However, the majority are regular people like you and me. They have had bad luck and poor health care, and they can do little to get out of their situation.”
Each month, we’ll bring you a mini-profile of one of the special nurses nominated for the sixth annual ajcjobs Nursing Excellence Awards, which will be awarded on May 4, 2011. For ticket information, go to www.ajc.com/go/celebratingnurses.
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