College of Nursing Professor Wins International Honor

By Nate Hinkel

Cheryl Schmidt, Ph.D., R.N., holds the medal she was awarded from the International Committee of the Red Cross. Cheryl Schmidt, Ph.D., R.N., holds the medal she was recently awarded from the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Schmidt wears the Florence Nightingale Medal as a doll of the nursing icon adorns a shelf in her office.

Nov. 22, 2011 | Helping to build a substantial and effective disaster relief effort in Arkansas and beyond is the legacy Cheryl Schmidt, Ph.D., R.N., has been working to leave behind.

She was honored for those efforts Oct. 26 by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) as one of four in the United States this year to receive the Florence Nightingale Medal, the nursing profession’s highest honor.

“It’s a wonderful and prestigious honor that reflects a lot of time and hard work put forth to get disaster relief efforts elevated to where they are today,” said Schmidt, associate professor and associate dean for service at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) College of Nursing and regional associate dean for UAMS-Northwest. “One of my greatest passions is to prepare others to take care of themselves and their families during disasters. It’s a tremendous thing to be recognized at this level for that.”

Schmidt was given the Florence Nightingale Medal during a ceremony at the American Red Cross national headquarters in Washington, D.C.

“These Red Cross nurse volunteers have helped bring food, shelter, comfort and hope during countless large and small disasters,” said Vivian Littlefield, American Red Cross National Chair of Nursing. “They have worked tirelessly to teach people what they should do before, during and after an emergency, and have formally trained scores of nurses and nursing students in basic disaster response.”

Schmidt began volunteering with the Red Cross in 1974, teaching CPR courses to the local chapter in Michigan. She became involved in Red Cross disaster services in 1999 when American Airlines Flight 1420 crash landed at the Little Rock National Airport. Because of Schmidt’s military training as an assistant chief nurse in the U.S. Army and serving in the Army Nurse Corp Reserves for 20 years, she was recommended by a friend and colleague to assist in that disaster.

“Because of my Army field experiences, the Red Cross Disaster Operations Center assigned me to work in a small tent set up near the plane crash site, where I monitored the NTSB and clean-up crews for potential heat injuries and provided first aid,” Schmidt said. “After that experience, I was hooked.”

Since then she’s helped relief responses for tornadoes, ice storms, hurricane evacuation and dozens of other disasters. In 2005, she trained more than 180 nurses and physicians how to work in Red Cross Shelters and Service Centers to do first aid and triage and general health, while coordinating with county, state and federal relief organizations.

More than 500 of her former students are now prepared as disaster volunteer nurses in Arkansas, and many of her award-winning practices and programs have become models for other state efforts.

“I teach community health nursing here at UAMS, so I have taken plenty of nursing students with me when I respond to disasters in the central Arkansas area,” Schmidt said. “I teach them to use their expanding knowledge about community resources to help people who have lost everything in fires, tornados, floods and hurricanes. It’s a passion and it’s very rewarding to have been given this honor.”