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IDA BENEMERITO

2016 GRADUATE

Infection Prevention and Control

In 1987, on the final day of classes in her BSN program at Loyola
University, Ida Benemerito says that the words of the dean of nursing
hit her hard. “She stood in front of our graduating class and said, ‘Ladies,
I expect each of you to earn your master’s degrees before you are 35
years old,’ says Ida, an Illinois native. “That really resonated with me and I
never forgot it.”
With the goal of advancing her education in the back of her mind,
Ida started her nursing career at Loyola University Medical Center’s
hematology/oncology unit. Thereafter, she spent a year at Cedar’s Sinai in
Beverly Hills, again in hematology/oncology, before returning to Chicago
for a job in the telemetry unit of Swedish Covenant Hospital. She married
and started a family, while continuing to advance her career. In 1991, Ida
joined Lake Forest Hospital, a community hospital and Magnet facility.
She worked as a staff nurse, case manager and nursing supervisor, but
eventually became one of the infection prevention and control coordinators.

A new opportunity

In 2010, a former colleague encouraged Ida to apply for an open multi-drug
resistant organisms (MDRO) position at the brand new Captain James
A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center, a partnership between the U.S.
Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense and the
first hospital in the country to integrate healthcare delivery and operations
of two distinct healthcare organizations (the North Chicago VA Medical
Center and the Naval Health Clinic Great Lakes).

“It was an opportunity for a new challenge,” she says. Right away,
Ida was encouraged to look into pursuing the MSN—something she’d
been considering since that fortuitous day in 1987. She was awarded a
scholarship from the VA to apply to the university of her choosing, and
began her research. “Getting the MSN means a lot to me. I decided to get
the MSN because of the dean who inspired me at Loyola and because of
my commitment to lifelong learning.”

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