ICN Honors Nurse Whose Work Reaches Around the Globe
Tuesday July 1, 2003
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The goat provided a moment of levity during one of Etherington's many missions to Bosnia and other war-torn countries as a volunteer with Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders). For her years of volunteer work, both at home and abroad, the International Council of Nurses (ICN) awarded her the 2003 International Achievement Award. The Florence Nightingale International Foundation-sponsored award is presented every two years to one practicing nurse in the world who has substantially contributed to at least two of four areas in nursing: direct care, research, education, and management.
Etherington is no stranger to international awards. In 1999, she was, as part of the Medecins Sans Frontieres organization, awarded a group Nobel Peace Prize for work in Kosovo. She now serves as president on the group's board of directors of the US section. The International Committee of the Red Cross and the American Red Cross have honored her for her efforts at home and abroad, including her work after the LA earthquake and 9/11.
"This award in particular is very special," Etherington says about her ICN Achievement Award, because it is exclusive to nurses. However, she adds her work is about much more. "I'm working with populations that have no interest in my international award. Life for them goes on as before."
A Journey Begins
After studying political science and journalism at the University of Kentucky, Etherington graduated from Spaulding University in Louisville, KY, with her BSN in 1971. Then, she joined the Frontier Nursing Service, a community-nursing organization that drove Jeeps over rutted dirt roads to outpost clinics to assist rural Appalachian populations.
"First, I went to visit, and I knew absolutely that this is where I wanted to be," Etherington says. "I loved the land, and I loved the people. There were no doctors to speak of. Until 1968, the nurses delivered care throughout the mountains by horseback."
Etherington returned for more training after few years and graduated with a master's in nursing from Vanderbilt in 1975, with an emphasis in psychology and community health. Her graduate work included initiating a special clinical placement with the Nashville Metropolitan Police department. "I was completely overwhelmed to find the lack of healthcare and emotional support services offered to victims of violent crime, particularly victims of rape."
Etherington approached the newly elected mayor with ideas to remedy the situation, and he concurred. Upon her graduation, Etherington was hired full-time to run the Victim Intervention Program, one of the first police-based counseling programs in the nation.
The World Calls
After five years with the police department, Etherington took a leave of absence to spend three months in Cambodia as a Red Cross volunteer. She cared for surviving victims of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge reign of terror in Cambodia. "In my lifetime, it was the first incident of genocide," Etherington says. Between 1 million and 2 million Cambodians were tortured and killed. "We were watching people die because they were so starved. During monsoon season, people would literally drown because they were too weak to lift their heads."
After her work in Cambodia, Etherington returned to her work at the Nashville Police Department, married, and did not return to the theater of international health until the war in Bosnia. "The media were reporting there were thousands of rape victims," Etherington says. "I felt a compelling pull into Bosnia."
On her third mission to Bosnia, Etherington evaluated mental health programs implemented in Sarajevo. By the end of 1996, she had spent a year-and-a-half there on four separate trips. "I got to know the people so well, and it felt like home, even though it was during a war," she says.
After joining Medecins Sans Frontieres in 1996, Etherington began to specialize in evaluating population needs and implementing community mental health programs for survivors of war and natural disasters around the world. She works with parents who struggle with grief and depression after having watched their children die and survivors of genocide to help them cope with their magnitude of losses and the incapacitating grief that follows.
Back home, Etherington's husband, Stan, and their two dogs, Belel and Wesley, patiently waited for the 2003 International Achievement Award winner to return home from her latest missions. Nursing and medical students signed up in advance for the classes she teaches at Vanderbilt, while half a world away, she instilled hope in the world's most hopeless populations and shared her lunch with a wayward Bosnian goat.
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