Lynn Mohr, PhD, APRN, professor, Department of Women, Children and Nursing, talks about that wherever she goes, animals follow. Mohr grew up on a farm in Iowa and spent her summers working for her local veterinarian. From a young age, she knew what she wanted to do with her life, and that was to take care of animals. Or so she thought.
“I couldn’t get into veterinary school at the time, because being a woman, they did not accept women,” Mohr says. “I was devastated, and I wondered ‘what am I going to do?’”
That’s when Mohr’s neighbor suggested she take care of people instead. But she was hesitant. Mohr had never been inside a hospital, and the only interaction she had with her pediatrician was getting a lollipop.
“I didn’t really know what went on in the hospital,” she says. “But I made the decision to help people. At least I knew how to give medications, and you know, I could birth a calf.”
She began her profession as a nurse by earning a diploma at St. Luke’s School of Nursing in, Cedar Rapids, Iowa , which is now closed and has become part of Coe College. Mohr explains that the three-year program required students to live in a residence hall connected to the hospital.
“It was incredibly challenging,” Mohr says. “I started with a group of 130 people and graduated with 32.”
Mohr went on to receive a bachelor’s degree from South Dakota State University and a master’s degree from the University of Kansas. She earned her PhD at Rush University in 2015 — five years after being named director of the Pediatric and Neonatal Clinical Nurse Specialist Program. Her research work has centered on adolescents experiencing an intestinal ostomy.
Now, Mohr is a Women, Children, Family Nursing professor and department chair in the College of Nursing. Mohr’s work involves supporting faculty within her department and working collaboratively with fellow department chairs to improve graduate education and research. She continues to impact future nurses today.
Changing care for patients everywhere
While Mohr has called Chicago home for nearly two decades, she feels like it was just yesterday when she visited the city for the first time. Mohr was heading to Chicago with a patient, Katie Beckett, who was getting a phrenic nerve pacer implanted.
“I remember coming down I-290 thinking there are so many cars and people,” she says. “I had never seen traffic like that before. I had never seen all these people before.”
Beckett contracted encephalitis when she was nine months old. The condition destroyed her phrenic nerves — bilateral mixed nerves that allow the lungs to expand or contract. With the loss of lung functioning, Beckett became ventilator dependent.
“She was in our PICU for the next three years, and she pretty much lived here because, at the time, we didn’t have any state funding for ventilator dependent children,” Mohr says.
But Mohr and other night nurses wanted her to experience the comfort of her own home. They wrote a proposal that laid out the cost to keep her at the hospital versus sending her home. That proposal eventually landed in the lap of President Ronald Reagan.
“It was a Wednesday afternoon, and he talked about her [Beckett] in his State of the Union Address. We were stunned,” Mohr says. “Within a week, there was federal funding for her to go home.”
In 1981, the Katie Beckett Waiver Medicaid program was signed into law, providing health care coverage for children in select states who have disabilities, chronic illnesses or mental health needs.
Exceptional commitment to serving and education
Mohr’s commitment to her patients and students recently earned her the 2026 NACNS Susan B. Davidson Service Award. The award recognizes clinical nurse specialists for their hard work, education and service. Her impact has also reached across the pond with her election as an overseas fellow at the Royal Academy of Medicine in England. She is also a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing.
“A comment that has always stuck with me is ‘when you come to Rush, you not only get to take care of children and families, but you get to take care of the people who are going to care for them,’” Mohr says. “I knew that what Rush had was really great and, hopefully, I could help make an impact at a greater level.”
Mohr gets goosebumps when she thinks about the next generation of Rush University nurses. While one of her former students volunteers across the country, helping build a hospital in Tanzania, others are starting their businesses to reduce burnout in bedside nurses.
“We have exceptional people who are going to provide exceptional care for patients and families, and they’re going to do it from an equitable standpoint,” Mohr says.
So, her early plans to become a veterinarian did not work out. But something much greater did.
“There are so many people, families and children I’ve had the privilege to take care of,” Mohr says. “Everything happens for a reason.”