Ingrid Polkinghorne dedicated her life to nursing, and now her legacy is doing the same. The Ingrid Polkinghorne Nursing Scholarship is awarded to a student entering the nursing program in their sophomore year and is renewable through graduation. Underrepresented students in higher education with financial need are given preference during the selection process.
We welcome you to make a gift below. Join others in honoring Ingrid's memory while affording new students the opportunity to follow in her footsteps.
About Ingrid Polkinghorne
Ingrid Christine Westin was born in Detroit and was the oldest of four children. She graduated from Edina High School and went to nursing school at Methodist Hospital in St Louis Park.
She began her nursing career at Iowa Methodist Hospital in Des Moines, Iowa, in their newly established Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). Babies and moms became her focus throughout her nursing career.
Ingrid later moved to Minneapolis to join the NICU team at the brand-new Children’s Hospital of Minneapolis, where she served as a staff and charge nurse. In that position, she enjoyed traveling to rural areas as a transport nurse by bringing premature infants and sick newborns back to Children’s to receive leading-edge NICU care. She also met her future husband, Jeff Polkinghorne, who was working at Children’s as a nursing assistant.
Abbott Northwestern Hospital is located next door to Children’s, so when they decided to set up a Level 2 Transitional Nursery, Ingrid moved to run that unit as the head nurse.
Ingrid took a break from practical nursing and worked at several health insurers focusing on managing claims, adjudication and quality control. She returned to practical nursing as the head nurse of Women’s and Infants at Missouri Baptist Hospital in St. Louis, where she managed over 400 staff members, the construction of a brand new floor space and a successful National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) accreditation for her department.
Ingrid possessed many qualities that gained her respect by everyone she touched. She was a caring but tough manager. Through her encouragement and dedication to self-improvement, she lifted many nurses in her department to greater things. She was highly respected by the medical staff, administrators and especially her nursing staff.
Ingrid retired from nursing and moved to northern Minnesota with her husband Jeff and enjoyed stock trading, gardening and watching BSU hockey (especially the Fitzgerald triplets). She was married to Jeff for 44 years and had two children: Emily, who died of a brain tumor at age 9, and Coleman, who lives in St. Louis.
Ingrid was given the gift of mercy and used it unselfishly in her home, with her family and friends and in her career of nursing. She put others’ needs and pleasures first and genuinely enjoyed doing that. No one had a bigger heart or sense of duty and giving to others than she did.
Ingrid was taken from us too early by the coronavirus on April 26, 2020. We know she would want her legacy to encompass giving back to the nursing profession she loved.