What I Needed to Do

Lorna Linhart

Lorna Linhart began a new career in her 30s, transforming her life for the better. Here she charts her evolution—from an early computer career to a rewarding healthcare career, and finally a role in supporting today’s nurse practitioner students at Pace University. This artwork, created by Lorna, depicts her first patient—the child of a close friend.

I received my bachelor’s degree in mathematics at Georgia State and took a job near Atlanta where I learned to program and develop software code. Then I met my husband who got a job in New York, so we headed there and I worked for IBM for a while.

But I thought to myself, “If I stay in computers, I will go crazy.” Through Columbia University I received some career counseling to consider where to go next. There I learned about Pace’s master’s program in nursing, applied and was accepted.

The nurse practitioner movement had started at Yale in the 1960s and Pace’s program was developed using the Yale program as a model. For me, it became the gateway as a math major with a bachelor’s degree to study nursing in a master’s program.

I had always had an interest in medicine and the career counseling at Columbia routed me toward people-oriented careers, which in turn directed me to healthcare. The Pace program was the perfect fit for a career-changer at my age. Moving from mathematics to nursing was less of a jolt than you might expect because both fields require critical thinking.

Decisions, decisions

Working in emergency rooms made tremendous use of my background at Pace, because my critical thinking skills were employed to work through what was going on with individual patients. I loved triage—as a nurse you’re not making a diagnosis, which is the doctor’s job, but you are making decisions about proper care and how best to interact with the rest of the medical staff.

Since the pandemic, I have become concerned about hospital staff exhaustion. There will be a large amount of fallout from the wear and tear of the pandemic on personnel and they shouldn’t be looked down upon as they get the help they need to address their burnout. Medical professionals will need support free of any stigma or judgment.

Telehealth will help us reach more people—far beyond just Zoom meetings with medical professionals. Software now in development will assist doctors and nurses with diagnosis and treatment paths in impressive new ways.

But, technology aside, both doctors and nurses both provide the personal touch so necessary to the patient. Technology, as powerful and helpful as it can be, should not force the medical provider into a format that fits what’s on a screen. It needs to adapt to the human side of the medical practice.

Getting patients on board

Nurse practitioners will continue to be a mainstay for people getting on board with their initial healthcare in clinics, hospitals or physicians’ offices. They will provide the personal care that is not always received by the patient from other sources. They are the front line of personal healthcare.

For these reasons, I put in my will that my endowed scholarship will go to nurse practitioner students at Pace. I am without heirs and I feel very strongly that nursing can have a positive impact on society, so I decided to leave part of my estate to Pace.

When I became a nurse after graduating from Pace, I became an entirely different person that I had been before. For me it was a good growth path.

I want to share the ability to have impact on other people’s lives with future Pace students. My gift is to assist only Pleasantville campus students in the nurse practitioner program. I’m convinced that NPs will continue to be needed for a long time.

As I was about to graduate from Pace, a close friend of mine named Susan called me. She and her husband had had a baby who became my first patient—and I made my first correct diagnosis! So I made a print from the photograph that commemorated this event. Jamie, the baby, is now 40 and lives in France.

I want to have impact on other people’s lives with future Pace students.

I want the endowment to be named for myself and my two friends—Susan (in the print) and another friend who passed 10 or so years ago. They both exhibited good characteristics for nursing, even though they were not nurses. And they supported me when I needed it myself.

Pace was a transformative time for me. I love the Pleasantville campus. I think I’ve been a good nurse through the years and I have done my job well—and that’s because Pace gave me the proper tools. It was where I needed to go and what I needed to do, and I’m glad I did it.

If you’d like to impact Pace University students with an endowed scholarship in your will, contact Marc Potolsky at 212-346-1619 and mpotolsky@pace.edu to learn more.