Welcome to ELPNA-the Evangelical Lutheran
Parish Nurse Region 6 web page.
Allow us to introduce ourselves.

Mary Ann Mette
Currently, I am a Registered Nurse who has volunteered as Chair/Parish Nurse of Lutheran Church of the Resurrection’s Health Ministry program since its inception in 2002 and am active with the Boy Scouts of America.  I graduated from Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana with my BSN in 1975, and pursued a Master’s degree.  I have had an interest in Faith Community Nursing since the mid 1990’s and subsequently have taken 3 Fundamental courses.  The most recent March 2014.   I have been a member of the ELPNA and our local Episcopal Retirement Services Parish Nurse program (1998-2020).  Our church has participated in many of their programs. My career has been predominately in the Community Health arena, including Ambulatory Clinics, Public Health, Home Health, Occupational Health and Hospice.   I find that my community health experiences has enhanced my ability to identify and intervene in a variety of members’ needs, and to provide and promote health and wellness programs. I look forward to continue working with the ELPNA board members and Norah Bertschy as a representative of Region 6.

My continued goals are to promote membership and education of our organization by identifying, providing guidance and encouragement to other parish nurses and/or interested nurses, churches in our region and synod; and to impact our organization in participation through meetings, committee work.

Norah
I am a new Parish Nurse, yet a RN with 50 years nursing.  Isn’t that the brilliance of nursing!!!  I completed my Foundations course in mid-2019 and was installed as the first Parish Nurse at Trinity Lutheran, Cincinnati, OH a few months before the world changed with COVID! 

My initial nursing education was at a wonderful diploma program – a 1972 graduate of Idabelle Firestone School of Nursing in Akron, OH.  Upon graduation,  I then served 2 years in the Navy at Philadelphia Naval Hospital.

Upon returning to Ohio in 1974 I resumed a civilian life, nursing in a community hospital working in Med-Surg, Pediatrics, OB, infection control and employee health – oh the versatility of nursing!  Along the way I completed my BSN – thanks to the GI bill. And then in 1995 I completed an MSN in Child and Adolescent Primary Care and became a PNP.  Both degrees were earned at the University of Akron.

Our family moved to Cincinnati in 1998, to enable me to work as a PNP to serve the underserved in school – based public health programs, eventually living the dream of providing primary care in a full-fledged School Based Health Clinic.  I retired from fulltime employment in 2018.

I re-affiliated with the Navy Reserve in 1989 and retired with 24 years of service in 2011.  I did see the world – joining military medical teams in Thailand, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, Gabon-Africa, and in 2010 on the USNS Comfort providing care to earthquake victims.  A life lesson of traveling the world; we are so much more alike than we are different!

Becoming a Parish Nurse is a realized desire of my heart since the 1980s when I met Granger Westberg. And now finding our way through the Pandemic, I feel God has put me in the right place at the right time.   Another life lesson: networking – it is so important to find kindred spirits, working with ELPNA!

I am blessed with a loving and extremely supportive spouse of 50 years, 3 adult children and 3 teenage grandsons.