On Friday, May 18, 2013 at approximately 10:30 a.m., when Dr. McGrorty was called to the stage to receive a hard-earned doctoral degree—two women stood up. An assistant professor in La Salle’s School of Nursing and Health Sciences, Dr. Anne McGrorty became one of the first three graduates from the University’s Doctor of Nursing Practice program. And at the same time, just a little farther down Broad Street, her daughter, Dr. Alison McGrorty, received her medical degree at TempleUniversity.

“My gift to my daughter is showing her the importance of loving your work—it never feels like work when you love what you do,” Anne said. Regardless of which Dr. McGrorty you’re referring to, “we are both dedicated to improving the health of children.”

Anne will continue the career in pediatric nursing she has cultivated over the past 35 years—and Alison will soon begin her residency in pediatric medicine at the Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children in Wilmington, Del.

“This idea that there’s a line drawn in the sand between nurses and physicians, it doesn’t exist in my world,” Anne said. “I’ve been collaborating with physicians my whole life in nursing. One day, my daughter may be one of those physicians I collaborate with, and I hope she is.”

While each woman walked her own path to becoming Dr. McGrorty, the two traveled a parallel journey. “I was in a unique position where I wasn’t just a phone call away, I was down the hall,” Alison says. While she pored over medical textbooks in her upstairs bedroom, her mother churned out clinical research papers in the basement. Both women racked up an impressive number of clinical hours in the hospital—once even running into each other at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children while Alison was completing an infectious disease rotation and Anne was teaching a class of nursing students.

When they weren’t at the hospital during working hours, they were often there during visiting hours. In the midst of their studies, they unexpectedly found themselves on the other side of stethoscope when John (Anne’s husband and Alison’s father) discovered he had a brain tumor. “Suddenly the things we were talking about in my classes started to hit closer to home, and it gave me a new perspective,” Alison said. “It taught me how to look beyond the diagnosis and realize there is a face and a heart and a family there and that sometimes is more important than what the prognosis is.”

During this difficult time, the family clung to the “three Cs” that had always been an emphasis in their household—character, commitment, and courage. “A lot of times, people look at how tragedy is going to disable us, rather than how it’s going to enable us to do things better,” Anne said. “We survived as a family and encouraged each other to achieve our goals.”

A craniotomy removed John’s tumor and restored him to health, but the harrowing experience added a whole new dimension to Anne and Alison’s medical education. “It’s a challenge when you have to put yourself into that other role. I wasn’t the nurse there and Alison wasn’t the physician; quite honestly, we had to take a step back and let other people do their jobs,” Anne said. “Going forward, I think about my patients or their family getting the same news we did, and I know what that’s like. I’ve walked in their shoes. There were lessons we learned—not always the easy way—but, quite frankly, I’m glad we had the opportunity to learn them because it makes us better at what we do.”

-Colleen Mularkey, ’06

Nursing graduate Jillian Pintye, ’07 has arguably done more to give back to the world than most others her age—something that Pintye attributes to her time at La Salle.

Pintye, a native of Tuckerton, N.J., graduated with her nursing degree and a desire to help others in need. This, and the aid of then-La Salle Honors Program Director John Grady, encouraged her to apply for a Fulbright Grant. “He supported me tooth and nail through the application process,” she said. Her hard work paid off when she learned she was selected to study public health in Denmark as a recipient of the prestigious Fulbright grant.

From Denmark, Pintye joined the Peace Corps in hopes of helping other countries improve their response to health crises, something she realized she wanted to do after participating in a public health travel/study course that took her to a Mayan village in Guatemala during her junior year. Performing health screenings on the underprivileged children deepened her interest in public health nursing.

“Experiencing the health disparities present in the marginalized community we served unexpectedly shook me to the core,” she said of the trip. “I was overwhelmed by the burden of disease that was attributed to preventable infections.”

Her commitment to the Peace Corps brought her to Botswana, where she focused on HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention. After spending two years in a small, remote village coordinating data collection from clinics and planning effective HIV/AIDS programming, Pintye went on to work in the city of Gabarone, working with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) on HIV/AIDS policy.

“HIV/AIDS is pervasive in the very fabric of society in Botswana, and it has immense cultural implications,” she said. “I truly believe that if we can put a halt to the HIV incidence, Botswana will flourish.”

During her time in Botswana, Pintye relied heavily on what she learned during her time at La Salle, particularly her statistics and research course with Zane Robinson Wolf, Ph.D., R.N., FAAN. “Using what I learned in Dr. Wolf’s class, I was able to guide my health management team through HIV/AIDS programming evaluations and to aid decision makers on how best to respond to the HIV epidemic.”

While serving in Botswana, Pintye met First Lady Michelle Obama while she was visiting the country with a number of young girls from the village, many of whom were AIDS orphans. “It was amazing to see how cross-cutting of a role model Obama is to young women; she can touch hearts and minds from cities in the U.S. to the bush of Botswana,” she said.

Now, after serving three years in the Peace Corps, Pintye is studying for her Master’s in Public Health at the University of Washington, specializing in epidemiology-global health.