The 6 years that have passed since a gunman mowed down her Bible study class at Emanuel AME have been busy for the former prison nurse who was among the five survivors.
When the brutal shooting took place, Polly Sheppard had just retired from nursing after 14 years at the Al Cannon Detention Center in South Carolina. The former nurse has channeled her grief since then by speaking around the country to spread the word about gun violence. Now, with the nest egg she has accumulated from her speaking gigs, our Nurse of the Week is working to address the staffing crisis in her own way – by setting up a scholarship fund for nursing students – particularly those who are interested in a career as prison health care workers.
Prison nursing, she says, is all about caritas: “I learned how to be compassionate. [How to be] more compassionate, and caring. And not assume everybody that goes to jail is guilty. Because everyone is not. You are innocent until proven guilty.” After a year of counseling, Sheppard even found forgiveness in her heart for the man who killed nine of her classmates, and she affirms that “Everybody deserves a second chance.”
But in describing her career, Sheppard does not mince words. She loved her work, but prison nursing is NOT easy. Prison health care facilities were understaffed long before Covid, so the hours could be as challenging as the job itself. “Sometimes,” she recalled, “I would work till 2 o’clock in the morning. Get there at 3pm, working till 2 am. Sometimes double shifts…” All while treating a population that rarely had access to regular preventive care and often were “suffering from mental illness, seizures or other chronic diseases.”
Hard as it could be, Sheppard found prison nursing to be deeply fulfilling and wants to see younger generations fill her place. Hence her decision to invest her post-Emanuel speaking engagement fees in a Polly Sheppard Scholarship Foundation for nursing students at Charleston college Trident Tech. The ongoing nurse shortage in prisons was a key factor in deciding to fund the scholarship: all recipients are expected to work for at least a year treating inmates.
At Trident, Sheppard is helping students who know what it’s like to dream of a career, only to find that the necessary education is utterly beyond their means. Shepperd herself has been in nursing for over 55 years. She graduated from high school in 1963 and became an LPN at her school’s vocational center in New York City, then pursued further studies at local community and technical colleges while working in city hospitals. Eventually, she moved to South Carolina and found her niche as a prison nurse.
In 2021, the first Sheppard Scholarship award went to Niki Walker, a 34-year-old mom of two and a former corrections officer. Far from being jaded by her earlier corrections experience, Walker sounds like a future prison nurse after Polly Sheppard’s own heart when she says, “Just because you are in jail doesn’t mean you don’t deserve adequate care. No one is immune from making one bad choice.”
For more on Polly Sheppard—and her first scholar, Niki Walker—click here.
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