Nurse of the Week Andrea Dalzell was just 5 years old when she was diagnosed with transverse myelitis, a neurological disorder caused by inflammation in the spinal cord. Before long, she needed a wheelchair to get around, but that simply meant she would move forward on wheels instead of on her feet—and she hasn’t stopped moving since.
As she grew up, Dalzell became deeply involved in advocacy for the disabled and received a number of awards in recognition for her work, including the Cindy Loo Disability Rights Advocate Award in 2015. In 2018, the Brooklynite became New York City’s only wheelchair-bound RN and attained her bachelor’s degree. In a special interview on the September 10 broadcast of Good Morning America (GMA), Dalzell made it clear that her mission is to bring more disabled people into nursing and other healthcare professions. She told GMA, “You have to have people with these disabilities, these diagnoses, being in healthcare.”
Easily navigating hospital corridors in her wheelchair, Dalzell became a dedicated nurse, and threw herself into work on the NYC frontline when the city was stricken by the pandemic in Spring 2020. Now, she’s a nurse and department head at the Manhattan Quad school for gifted children with disabilities, where “the kids absolutely love her,” according to school founder Kim Busi.
Sitting in her wheelchair on the GMA stage, Dalzell said that she is trying to spread a message of hope and aspiration: “People with disabilities aren’t living a death sentence. They’re living life, and I get to prove every day that I’m going to do that. I need to be able to change that narrative for others so if they know that they’re diagnosed with something… that life doesn’t stop there. Life still happens, and it’s up to them to decide if they want to live it.”
At the conclusion of her interview, GMA host TJ Holmes awarded a teary-eyed Dalzell a $1 million dollar Visionary Prize from the Craig H. Neilsen Foundation in honor of the “extraordinary determination, inexhaustible passion, and ability to inspire” the wheelchair-bound RN has displayed in her advocacy for the disabled.
Dalzell wants to put some of the money toward advancing her education, but she is devoting most of the award to advocacy: “I want to start a whole program for people with disabilities to get into health care. They should be given a chance,” she told GMA.
Visit this page to see the full Good Morning America feature on Andrea Dalzell.
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