24
doc • Winter 2016
Kentucky
Profile in Compassion
A Father’s Legacy of
Compassionate Care
By John A. Patterson
MD, MSPH, FAAFP
Delwin Jacoby APRN,
DNP credits her OB-GYN
father with her own career’s
emphasis on service and
compassionate care. She and her three siblings were all born while her father was in
medical school and residency. Growing up
watching her father care for patients, she
always knew she would become a nurse or
a doctor. Her father always told her to ‘take
care of everybody, regardless of their ability
to pay.’ His own father was a general practitioner serving Appalachian coal mining
families and taught him this living legacy of
compassionate medical service.
Delwin worked as a nursing assistant in
the old Louisville General Hospital serving
the largely indigent inner city population
during college before completing her nursing training at Clemson in 1979, her nurse
practitioner training at UK in 1984 and her
DNP at the Medical University of South
Carolina in 2013. As an advanced practice
nurse, she returned to service in Louisville’s
inner city followed by 4 years from 19861990 at Lexington’s Community Kitchen
Clinic, the precursor to Lexington’s Hope
Center, serving homeless and at-risk indigent men and women. From 2006-2009,
she worked as a nurse practitioner and was
in charge of quality improvement for ser-
vices to the homeless and indigent at the
Bluegrass Farmworker’s Health Center, the
precursor of today’s Bluegrass Community
Health Center, now a Federally Qualified
Health Center. She also helped establish a
rural health clinic in Lawrenceburg affiliated with Woodford Memorial Hospital and
worked there as a nurse practitioner from
1995-2000.
Delwin works 1 day a week at Lexington’s
Baby Health Service, serving mainly
uninsured and indigent children. Donna
Sizemore, an RN at Baby Health with
decades of pediatric nursing experience,
says ‘Delwin Jacoby is simply the best nurse
practitioner I’ve ever worked with. She has
devoted her career to serving the underserved. She always goes the extra mile. She
taught herself Spanish to better serve the
Hispanic communities in the clinics where
she works.’
Her impulse for compassionate service
is kept alive by constantly remembering
her father’s advice to ‘take care of everyone,
no matter what.’ This means recognizing
and embracing the challenges encountered
in serving marginalized communities.
Homeless and indigent clinic patients and
their families present with more than physical medical problems. Providing comprehensive primary care to this disadvantaged
community also involves social and psychological service coordination. She often has
to be creative and use multiple community
resources to get patients and families the
care they need.
Other ways she keeps compassion alive
and manages her own stress include flower
gardening and regular physical exercise. She
admits to being ‘an exercise freak.’ She runs,
bikes and has competed in several marathons and triathlons. After giving her first
marathon medal to her father, she has since
given away any ribbons or trophies to her
sick patients or friends.
She has taught nursing at Spalding
University in Louisville for over 20 years.
Founded by the Sisters of Charity of
Nazareth, Spalding’s very mission is faithbased service and compassion. She now
mentors and teaches pathophysiology and
genetics to Spalding nurse practitioner and
DNP students. After completion of a genetics courseworks sponsored by Cincinnati
Children’s Hospital, she sees patients one
day a week in the genetics clinic at UK’s
Delwin Jacoby APRN, DNP
Department of Pediatric Genetics and
Metabolism. Many of the Baby Health
Service patients have developmental delays
and intellectual disabilities, some of which
have a genetic basis. To teach health professional students the importance of service
and compassionate care, she thinks we must
teach by example. To that end, she [