Nurse From Glenwood Among Iowa's Best

A Glenwood woman says she’s “honored” and “humbled” to be named one of the 100 Great Iowa Nurses.

Dee McIntyre, a registered nurse in the emergency room at CHI Health Mercy Hospital in Council Bluffs, is southwest Iowa’s lone recipient of the award this year. The 1978 Glenwood Community High School graduate has worked at Mercy Hospital for 26 years following stints at the Shenandoah Medical Center and Glenwood State Hospital-School (Glenwood Resource Center).

Now in its 12th year, the 100 Great Iowa Nurses program honors nurses from across the state who distinguish themselves in their profession by going “above and beyond” to care for their patients. Nominations for the award can be made by members of the nursing profession, patients, friends and family members.

McIntyre was nominated for the award by Mercy Emergency Department director Barb Roenfeld.

“It’s just really special to get an award from peers,” McIntyre said. “I’ve had some awesome mentors along the way and I work with an awesome team.”

McIntyre said she is blessed to be working in a profession she loves.

“It’s about being invited into strangers’ lives, moments and experiences and sharing their joy, pain, fear, doubt, loss and anxiety totally for that moment or experience,” McIntyre said. “It’s about caring, loving, advocating, sensing, listening, crying, praying and confronting in a professional and competent way.

“It’s a job that lets you truly know what it means to be human and reach out and touch someone.”

McIntyre and Iowa’s 99 other great nurse honorees will be recognized at a celebration in Des Moines on May 1 as a prelude to National Nurses Week.

“It will be a special day because my mother (Mary Piatt) has her birthday on May 1,” McIntyre said.