10 Plus: Dottie Stultz
Dottie Stultz has been a congregational nurse at churches in Greensboro since 2002. She oversees Grace Community Church's Homeless to Wholeness program, part of the countywide initiative to give chronically homeless residents support and a place to live.Stultz talked with staff writer Amanda Lehmert about her work.
Q. Why did you become a nurse?
A.Growing up, I was a candy striper. But when I decided to go to college I either wanted to be a math teacher, a PE teacher or a nurse. Nursing is teaching health and caring.
Q.You used to work at the coronary intensive care unit at Moses Cone Hospital. How did you decide to start working in churches?
A. I just felt God calling me to do something that he wanted me to do. I had heard of the congregation nurse program and thought about doing it.
Q. What does a congregational nurse do?
A. A congregational nurse is an integrator of health and faith. You're a health educator. You're a health counselor. You're an advocate. You're a referral agent. I was hired by the shepherding pastor (to work at Grace Community Church). ... My main thing to begin with was to screen out people to see whether they could get medications, whether we could purchase medications for them.
Q. How did you get involved with the initiative to house homeless people?
A. (Homeless advocate Michele Forrest) had arranged to write a grant through the Greensboro Housing Coalition for Grace to get three Shelter Plus Care housing vouchers. I helped Beth McKee-Huger of the housing coalition write the grant. I kind of ended up taking that over. Those three vouchers are now seven vouchers. They are for the chronically homeless with a disability, and that disability can be physical, mental or substance abuse.
Q.What does an average day look like?
A. Yesterday I got a call on my cell phone from a client's girlfriend saying he was trying to commit suicide. I came up to the church and ended up going with them ... to Moses Cone.
Q. So it is going from one crisis to another?
A. Not always. Sometimes it can be. Sometimes it can be just clients coming in and being that referral agent. Sometimes it's like being that advocate.
Q. You could work with all kinds of people. Why work with the mentally ill and homeless?
A. I don't really know. It just happened. I love them and they deserve to be loved just like everybody else, showing that they are a person and somebody cares for them.
Q. How is running this program for homeless people different from being a congregational nurse?
A. They are basically a lot of the same things. The problem is you have to set boundaries and not enable people. That is one of the hardest things. I have had to learn a lot of hard lessons along the way about setting boundaries and not enabling people.
Q. The goal of the Homeless to Wholeness program is to get people off assistance and caring for themselves. Can you see that happening for some of the people you are helping?
A. I have two that are almost there. There's a couple that I met when they were living on the streets. ... Since they have gotten into the program with (a local) church, they haven't used any.
Q.What was it that is helping them change their lives?
A. Mainly I think it is the love and support of godly people and learning how to live their lives.
Contact Amanda Lehmert at 373-7075 or amanda.lehmert@news-record.com
