Reid Hospital Governing Board
Clark brings community health advocacy to board
Karen Clark
Home-grown expertise
Reid Governing Board member Karen Clark started her affiliation with the hospital when she was born here.
Clark graduated from Richmond High School then went to Terre Haute to pursue a career in nursing. She first earned an associate degree in nursing and then a bachelor’s in nursing at Indiana State University. She also worked at Terre Haute Regional Hospital as she was pursuing her degrees. She was a nursing assistant there and later was a relief charge nurse on a medical surgical unit as well as in pediatrics.
Clark returned to Richmond in 1984 and worked at Visiting Nurse Health Care in New Castle for a year before she began teaching in the LPN program at IVY Tech. In 1987, she joined the Indiana University East faculty.
In the meantime, she completed her master of science in nursing at Ball State University, Muncie, in 1989, and a doctorate in education from Ball State in 2004 in adult and community education.
Her special areas of education and practice are community health nursing and nursing research.
As dean of nursing at IU East, Clark oversees 14 staff and faculty members and teaches a class in health care advocacy.
She asks her students to identify health risks, examine the services in place and target legislation that could be changed to create better health outcomes.
She encourages her students to follow the advice of anthropologist Margaret Mead and "Change the world, one person at a time."
Clark also declares her keen interest in helping adolescents maximize their potential. To that effort she is adult co-chair for Youth as Resources and is a board member of the Galileo Charter School. Both organizations, she said, "have the potential of making a positive impact on the community in a different way."
Clark is mother to two teenagers, Nicholas, 16, and Elizabeth (Lizzie), 13.
Karen Clark exudes enthusiasm regarding her role as a Reid Governing Board member. Clark joined the board in January 2005.
"This is an exciting time in the hospital’s history," Clark said. "We are setting the course to meet the needs of the community."
And "community" is a key word for Clark, whose professional preparation in nursing and passion for giving patients a voice center around improving the health of the community. "We know that health care in our county is a problem," she said, referring to number of uninsured and those who do not have resources to access health coverage. "But it is not someone else’s job to fix it. It is our job. Already, I have seen the passion of the board to make positive inroads into the community."
As member of the board’s Social Responsibility committee, Clark will have an opportunity to participate in that outreach.
Another area where Clark can positively affect community health is in her role as dean of the School of Nursing at Indiana University-East, "My being a nursing graduate is beneficial both to the university and the hospital," she said. That dual perspective allows her to help meet the educational needs of nursing students while preparing them for the opportunities that Reid Hospital can offer nursing graduates. "Nursing is such a neat place. It is a career when you can change every 10 years and still be a nurse," Clark said. "A nursing degree can take you anywhere." She said she tells nursing students: "Your degree is not a stopping place. It’s a starting place for continual learning."
Before Clark became a board member, she had worked with Reid’s education department, because "every nursing student at IU East is placed at Reid for clinical experience." She had also worked with Reid when she taught in IVY Tech’s licensed practical nurse program.
The relationship between those preparing nurses and those who provide career opportunities is an important one to all involved, she said.
Reid President Barry S. MacDowell agrees. "We have physicians on the board and have had nurses on the board. Our board makeup has also included educators. But we are fortunate to have one person with the unique background of teaching, nursing and university administration. As we move to the New Reid campus and seek to develop even more collaborative efforts with IU East, Karen’s input will be invaluable."
A patient advocate, Clark said she wants her students to find ways to make the biggest impact in educating and empowering people to make good health care decisions. "Nurses help others by being their voice until they find their own voices. " She added: "I love Ghandi’s statement: ‘You need to be the change you want to see in the world’."
