Nancy Falchuk, RN

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• LC: Nancy, with all your varied interests, why did you choose to become a nurse?
• LC: What led to your involvement with Hadassah?
• LC: What thoughts would you like to share with our readers about leadership?
• LC: What advice would you give to future leaders?
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Nancy Falchuk, RN, is the president of Hadassah, the largest volunteer organization and the largest women's organization in America. Founded in 1912, Hadassah sponsors progressive healthcare, education, youth institutions, volunteerism, and land reclamation in Israel. In the United States, Hadassah offers programs for education, youth, and health awareness, as well as advocates for issues of importance to women and the American Jewish community. She was a founding member of the Hadassah Medical Organization Board of Directors, serving from 1995 until 2004. The Hadassah Medical Organization (HMO) is one of the world's leading healthcare institutions, comprising two medical facilities in Israel—the Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center at Ein Kerem and the Hadassah University Hospital at Mount Scopus. Before becoming coordinator of Hadassah International, Falchuk was chair for the medical and scientific relationships for Hadassah International, which has groups in over 26 countries around the globe.

In June 1990, Falchuk cofounded the Hadassah National Center for Nurses Council, the first and still the only national professional organization for Jewish nurses. She currently serves as chair of the Hadassah National Center for Nurses Councils Advisory Board, whose members include American nursing deans, directors, researchers, and nursing administrators. With the support of Hadassah's members, she spearheaded the successful effort to create and fund Israel's first academic clinical master's program in nursing at the Hadassah-Henrietta Szold School of Nursing in Jerusalem.

Falchuk also founded the Montreal Hadassah Nurses Council, the first professional organization for Jewish nurses in Canada. She created the first Hadassah Nursing Institutes, as well as the Hadassah Nursing Educational Missions, the first three of which she led. She worked with the Hadassah nurses in Israel to develop international nursing symposia on trauma, acute care, and infection control that were held twice in Argentina and in Venezuela, Brazil, and Mexico.

After she completed her position as coordinator of Hadassah International in 2004, friends and colleagues established the Nancy Falchuk Nursing Scholarship Award to be given annually, which also included a grant to enhance the work of three nurses at the Hadassah Medical Centers in Jerusalem. She personally presented the first three recipients of this award in Jerusalem.

A graduate of Woodmere Academy on Long Island and Russell Sage College, where she earned her bachelor of science in nursing, she is married to Dr. Kenneth H. Falchuk, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. They have three adult children and five grandchildren.

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LC: Nancy, with all your varied interests, why did you choose to become a nurse? 

NF: There are many reasons, and, as with most life choices, those reasons reach back into early life. When I was a child, I needed an appendectomy. Naturally, I was taken to a hospital, which happened to be a Roman Catholic hospital, for the surgery…and I loved the nuns who were nurses there. This early fascination led to my determination to become a nurse, which initially did not thrill my parents. However, when they understood that I was serious, they gave me their full support. As a student, I worked as an aide and LPN before I graduated with my baccalaureate in nursing.

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LC: What led to your involvement with Hadassah? 

NF: I grew up in a Hadassah home! My mother was a Hadassah volunteer throughout my childhood. Hadassah is a woman's Zionist organization, ranked among the top 50 nonprofit organizations in the country. Hadassah's origins are deeply embedded in the nursing profession. The organization's first project was to send two American-trained nurses to Jerusalem in 1913 to do a needs assessment (this was before the term was even invented), and these reports helped create what became the infrastructure of healthcare in Israel! As a nurse and a Hadassah member, I understood just how much impact nurses had—and continue to have—on the health of individuals and populations. Thus, it seemed natural to me to marry the two of them and use nursing as a bridge of care and understanding to other people in other cultures and countries around the world.

One of the responsibilities of leadership is to grasp opportunities, as well as to create opportunities. So I grasped one of the many opportunities Hadassah offered me and cofounded the Hadassah Nursing Councils. In turn, the Nurses' Councils have created many, many opportunities for others. The Hadassah Nurses' Council was formed for the purpose of establishing an international partnership with the nursing division of the Hadassah Medical Organization. Our mission is to meet the special educational, social, and professional concerns of Jewish/Zionist nurses in the United States and Israel, and to enhance and support the nursing profession in both countries. Currently, approximately 3,400 nurses are members of the 45 nurses' councils in the United States.

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LC: What thoughts would you like to share with our readers about leadership? 

NF: Leadership in nursing, and in healthcare in general, must be about the patient. The most important leadership we exercise is at the bedside. When I graduated from my baccalaureate program in nursing in the 1960s, I applied for a job at a Boston hospital (you would know the name, but I won't embarrass the hospital by naming it). I was told, “We don't want nurses with college degrees.” So I went to Peter Bent Brigham, where I was hired…this tells you just how far nursing has come and how hard nurses struggled in those decades to establish both their clinical importance and their clinical leadership. It is on this clinical foundation that today's nursing managers and administrators stand; it is the source of their influence and authority. Nursing managers and administrators represent and run the largest clinical discipline in every area of health service delivery. When you are the leader of this discipline, which is present at the bedside more than any other, you never allow yourself to be separated from what patients need and what nurses need to deliver it!

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Clinicians, particularly nurses, speak just one language—no matter what country they come from, no matter their culture, religion, or level of education—and that language is patient care. Their problems and issues, despite specialty or location or country or politics, are much the same. Nursing, the clinical care of patients, is a bridge among people going in both directions. It is important, however, to keep in mind that bridges provide for two-way exchange: two-way respect, two-way communication, and two-way learning. Throughout my career, I have used nursing as a bridge among peoples, disciplines, and cultures, and this bridge has never failed me.

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LC: What advice would you give to future leaders? 

NF: Nursing is a wonderful profession, and it is very diverse! There is no reason for a shortage of nurses; the work is good, and the pay is good. However, if nursing's leaders fail to recognize the centrality, the importance of clinical care for patients, they may lose nurses because they will have lost the mission of nursing—clinical care of patients without prejudice of any kind.

The Hadassah Medial Organization (HMO) was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by officials from at least four different countries for the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize because we serve all, patients and staff, regardless of their nationality or politics. We care for people. Their nominations cited three areas in which HMO excelled in promoting peace in the Middle East: the ability to maintain the value of equal treatment for all people despite treating more terror victims than any other medical center; the model of cooperation and coexistence set by the mixed staff of people of all faiths; and the organization's ongoing initiatives in creating bridges for peace, even throughout the intifada.

The profession of nursing has come a long way in the last generation, socially, educationally, and clinically. Now, we in nursing are beginning to expand our vision beyond any one setting or set of positions, and are using nursing as a bridge to others, helping to heal some of the world's social and political ills, one person at a time!