MILWAUKEE, Wis, This week the Milwaukee District Nurses Association and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel announced Mary Busalacchi as Nurse of the Year. Mary is a registered nurse with the Aurora Medical Group, RiverCenter. She specializes in the care of HIV patients.

For the last 13 years Mary has worked with Ian Gilson MD, of the Aurora Medical Group. In his nomination letter he said “Mary has dedicated herself to providing excellent care to hundreds of our HIV and AIDS patients.” Dr. Gilson further illustrated Mary’s dedication by sharing how she, on her own time, started and led a women’s support group for female pateints with HIV who would have otherwise felt isolated and frightened. Because of Mary’s “outside the box” thinking, as Dr. Gilson puts it, the women improved their self esteem and took an active involvement in their own care.

Sentiments such as Dr. Gilson’s were echoed by several of Mary’s patients in their support letters for her nomination. Words like compassion, sensitivity, genuine and remarkable appeared again and again in their letters. The theme was the same in each letter - that Mary treats her patients with the highest clinical care, but also has a unique way of combining it with the personal care that comes to mean so much.

Mary was selected as nurse of the year from more than120 other nominees, including 35 fellow Aurora Health Care nurses. She will be presented the 2006 Nurse of the Year award later this month at a special award’s ceremony. It was also published in a special section of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on May 7th.

Aurora Medical Group, RiverCenter is part of Aurora Health Care, not-for-profit Wisconsin health care provider and a nationally recognized leader in efforts to improve the quality of health care. Aurora offers services at sites in more than 90 communities throughout eastern Wisconsin.