Cortez woman named Nurse of the Year

Cortez woman named Nurse of the Year

June 30, 2001

PUBLIC-HEALTH NURSE Judy Wolfe proudly displays the Nurse of the Year award that she received from Indian Health Services. Wolfe traveled to Washington, D.C., to be presented with the award.

By Kevin Denke
Journal Intern

At first, nurse Judy Wolfe didn’t believe what she was seeing when she came across an e-mail on her computer congratulating her on being selected Nurse of the Year by the Indian Health Service Nursing Program.

In fact, she was pretty sure it was an error.

Wolfe knew she had been nominated for the award by her supervisor at the Shiprock Service Unit, but says she really didn’t think about it because roughly 4,000 other nurses had been nominated for the same award.

She wasn’t hallucinating, though, nor was she the victim of a erroneous e-mail. Wolfe was headed to Washington, D.C., for a week to accept her award. While Wolfe was proud to be given such a high honor, she was hesitant to even bring it up in the office.

"It’s a tremendous honor, especially for an Anglo person," Wolfe explained. "I work with the best people you can work with. If I do a good job, it is because of the them. Anybody in my department could have gotten this award. It isn’t just me."

Wolfe spent a week in D.C. attending the National Council of Nurse Administrators Annual Conference, where she was presented her award at an elegant banquet and even got to do a little sight-seeing.

It is perhaps a crowning achievement for Wolfe, who calls herself a "late-bloomer" to the nursing profession. She originally got a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice but had a hard time finding a job in Wisconsin.

She went back to school to get a nursing degree while her children were in school, expecting to use that along with her criminal-justice degree and perhaps work in a prison or jail.

The turning point came for Wolfe when she saw a glossy ad in a nursing magazine for the Indian Health Service. Wolfe, along with her kids, escaped the cold climate of Wisconsin and came to Cortez, where she became a public-health nurse. Wolfe says it was tough going as a beginning nurse but not just because she was working with a different culture.

"It’s hard to be a beginning nurse wherever you go," she said.

However, Wolfe loves Cortez and says from the people she works with to the people she helps that her job is very satisfying.

The one thing certain in her job is change. From day to day, Wolfe says she has to be very adaptable and has long since abandoned just having "Plan A and B."

"Plan B was not enough, I needed a Plan C."

On an average day, Wolfe will head out in a Jeep Cherokee armed with all the medical supplies imaginable for emergencies and a list of who she is going to see. Wolfe says she enjoys working with the whole family unit from the old to the young.

"Any kind of job that deals with people and families, there are a lot of issues," she explained. "But the positives override the negatives."

Her work, along with that of her co-workers, goes far beyond regular house calls. During the hantavirus scare, they held presentations to educate about the possible danger. The nurses also work with the Bureau of Indian Affairs schools as nurses. Wolfe was a pioneer in developing a jail health program at the Shiprock jail in 2000. The program she helped develop with the assistance of Dr. Donald Brunk provides health-care service to inmates on a weekly basis. Her work covers two states as she works in New Mexico and parts of Arizona.

In addition, Wolfe is active in a variety of community programs including a victim/offender mediation program, Restorative Justice, the Alternative High Schools Accountability Committee, Medicine Horse Therapeutic Riding and Horse Rehabilitation. As if that isn’t enough, she has become involved with the establishment of a youth court. She says it has been hard getting the youth court started, but she plans to devote more energy to it when she officially wraps up her master’s degree in science and nursing from the University of Phoenix-New Mexico campus later this year.

In July, Wolfe will receive an award from the Navajo Area Director’s Award for Excellence, an award she also sees as special because it comes from the people she works with. That will be the second time that she has been given that honor. As for now, Wolfe is basking in the limelight of an award that will only happen once.

"There couldn’t be anything to top this," said Wolfe.