Today we are recognizing Adult Nurse Practitioner Stacy Kirkpatrick as our Nurse of the Week for the lasting impact she had on her patients in Boston’s homeless communities, and for her part in raising money for cancer research by riding in the Pan-Mass Challenge several times before she died of cancer on March 16 of this year.
For 17 years Kirkpatrick worked as a nurse practitioner at Boston Health Care for the homeless, serving as a caregiver to Boston’s neediest patients. Stacy was praised for her patience and the effect that she had on her patients. Kathleen Saunders who served as a mentor to Kirkpatrick at Boston Health Care for the Homeless stated that Stacy’s success with her patients was in her ability to not get emotional about control with patients. Serving fragile patients who suffer from mental illness or substance abuse, patients at the clinic would often miss appointments or disappear altogether, returning weeks or months later in a worse state of health but they could always go back to Ms. Kirkpatrick who would welcome them and treat them without judgment.
Having been diagnosed with breast cancer 11 years before her passing from ovarian cancer at 52 years old, Kirkpatrick devoted a lot of time and effort to raising money for cancer research. In total she raised about $60,000 through her several years riding in the Pan-Mass Challenge. Each year that she rode in the Challenge she would ask friends and family to give her names of people they wanted her to ride for, and she carried the names of over 90 people affected by cancer, dedicating her ride to each of them.
10 years after graduating from Southern Methodist University with a bachelor’s degree in English, Kirkpatrick enrolled at the MGH Institute of Health Professions and received her master’s in nursing in 1999. She was introduced to caring for the poor during her clinical rotations in school, and upon graduating she joined the staff at Boston Health Care for the Homeless as a nurse practitioner. This past Saturday a ribbon-cutting ceremony was held in Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood to rename a medical respite facility for the homeless after Kirkpatrick, now called the Stacy Kirkpatrick House.
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