Nursing alum gives back after ‘fabulous’ career

As nurse manager of the dedicated AIDS unit at (Advocate) Illinois Masonic Medical Center from 1989 to 2001, alumna Karen Coleman BSN ’65 saw the arc of the epidemic in Chicago, from 30 deaths per month to the advent of life-saving medications.

She said she wouldn’t have had the “fabulous career” she had without UIC Nursing, and is now giving back to the college with an estate gift to the UIC College of Nursing Scholarship Fund.

“I had help along the way,” she says. “I had scholarships to help me pay for school, based on need. I want other young people who want to be in nursing to have some help.”

Getting her start at UIC

Growing up in Chicago’s North Side neighborhood of Rogers Park, Coleman knew she wanted to be a nurse. At UIC, she could get a bachelor’s degree in nursing for the in-state rate, which was “very inexpensive,” she recalls. It was a no-brainer. She recalls “wonderful instructors” and making good friends in the program.

After graduating from UIC, Coleman worked at the Illinois Research and Educational Hospital (which was replaced by UIC Hospital, now UI Health, in 1980), eventually rising to the level of charge nurse.

After three years, she left to take a job at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles in the cardiac step-down unit. She worked with physicians Dr. William Ganz and Dr. Jeremy Swan as they developed the intravenous Swan-Ganz catheter. The unit housed a wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling computer to measure cardiac output for patients in cardiogenic shock. Now, the same data is measured by a small transistor at the end of a catheter.

Serving her country

She stayed at Cedars-Sinai for 12 years and advanced to the role of assistant director of nursing in the cardiac unit.

“Having a bachelor’s degree back got me into administrative positions,” she says. “A master’s was not required.”

By 1978, Coleman was looking for her next move. She decided to join the U.S. Air Force, barely making the then-maximum age cutoff of 37.

Because of her bachelor’s degree, she was commissioned as a captain and assigned to the obstetrical unit at the base in Dover, Delaware. She remained in the Air Force Reserve even as she moved back to Chicago.

“I wanted to continue serving my country but didn’t want it to be my whole life,” she said.

Thirteen years later, in 1991, she was deployed during Operation Desert Storm to a medical evacuation unit in Spain, but the unit didn’t see any casualties. The war was over in 100 hours.

‘The good, the bad and the ugly’

During the 1980s in Chicago, Coleman wanted to do her part to help fight the AIDS epidemic. The first case in Illinois was reported in 1981.

“My brother, who is gay, had a circle of friends who were getting sick and dying from AIDS,” she said. “I thought, well, I’m a nurse. There’s got to be something I can do.”

She got involved in AIDS organizations in the early ’80s, and in 1989, she heard that Illinois Masonic needed a head nurse for its dedicated AIDS unit. The average survival time from diagnosis in the early days was about 18 months.

“It was more like a dormitory than it was a hospital unit because our patients were going to be coming back often and eventually dying there,” she said.

Coleman stayed in that role until 2001 and saw what she describes as “the good, the bad and the ugly.”

“The ugly was obviously 30 deaths a month [at Illinois Masonic],” she said. The good came in 1996 when the new retroviral cocktails were developed and our patients were getting healthier.”

Coleman recalls that local restaurants would provide food to the unit three days a week. The hospital hired a psychologist to help nurses and staff process the tremendous losses, and there was a cadre of volunteers to share the overwhelming workload.

“The main devotion of the volunteers was that no patient was ever going to die alone,” she said.

Capping a career

By 2001, with the success of the new drugs, the unit was disbanded, Coleman said. She ended her career at the outpatient HIV center at Northwestern Medicine and conducted clinical research on patients who were on the new HIV/AIDS drugs. She retired in 2013.

“I never thought I’d be happy doing research, but it was really great,” she said.

Coleman said she hopes her gift to UIC Nursing will help current students pay for their nursing education so they can go on to have similarly fulfilling careers in nursing.

“I would hope that any enrolling student who needs the monetary help would get it, so they can get on with their education and do great things in nursing,” she said.

— Deborah Ziff Soriano, College of Nursing