"That Nurse Guy"
Former business executive, college professor trades suits for scrubs
By Kathy Quirk

John Shier, former Navy intelligence officer, college professor and business executive, made a drastic career change at age 60.

John Shier chats with a patient at Bellin Memorial Hospital in Green Bay. Photo courtesy of Bellin Memorial Hospital.

He graduated from UW-Milwaukee's School of Nursing and became a hospice care and hospital cardiac nurse. Six years later, he's director of the corporate prevention and wellness program at Green Bay's Bellin Memorial Hospital, and still works as a hospice nurse.

Shier is busy encouraging truckers, corporate executives, nursing students and anyone else who'll listen to his "live long and die healthy" message through good health habits.

"It's wonderful. I feel like all the work and training of my life have come together," he says.

After college and a five-year stint in the U.S. Navy, Shier earned his master's and doctorate degrees in philosophy from UW-Madison. He helped establish UW-Green Bay and taught there for nine years. He then served as executive director of the Regional Office on Aging for Northeastern Wisconsin, and later moved to the Brown County United Way as executive director.

Fourteen years later, he decided to become a nurse after his best friend died of cancer.

At 57, Shier started at UW-Milwaukee in an accelerated 16-month nursing program geared to students who already have a college degree. The program has graduated 248 students since it started in 1992, and another 24 are set to graduate in December. Forty-eight new students started the program this fall.

Through this program and others, UWM's School of Nursing and the other UW System nursing schools are helping Wisconsin meet a critical need for more highly trained nurses.

"The program has been one factor in attracting more students to nursing, helping us address the shortage of nurses," says Susan Dean Baar, associate dean of the UWM School of Nursing. "We've seen a large increase in applications. There's much more interest."

After graduation, Shier worked as a cardiac care and hospice nurse and realized many patients were dying too young from preventable or controllable diseases. That led to his current work in wellness and preventive care.

A Schneider National, Inc. trucking executive heard one of Shier's presentations and asked him to create an audiotape for the company's drivers. When truckers started asking for more from "that nurse guy," the program bloomed into a series of audiotapes for more than 300,000 over-the-road drivers.

Shier's health advice is simple and straightforward: "It's amazing what you can do with a little bit of daily exercise, good nutrition, stopping smoking and cutting down on drinking."