After 43 years spent advocating and educating, Clare McLaughlin is stepping away from a lifetime of service to babies and other pediatric patients.
By Maureen Gilmer, IU Health senior writer, mgilmer1@iuhealth.org
When Clare McLaughlin’s brother drove her from Pennsylvania to Indiana in a VW Bug and deposited her at Wile Hall on the campus of Methodist Hospital 43 years ago, she had a suitcase, a frying pan and a can opener.
But she also had big dreams and a passion for learning.
The year was 1981, and McLaughlin had just graduated from college with a degree in nutrition. She learned about an internship at Methodist and found her place in the world as a registered dietitian, providing lifesaving nutritional care to pediatric patients, most recently NICU babies at Riley Hospital for Children.
“Forty-three years next week. It’s unbelievable, and it’s hard to imagine it’s ending,” McLaughlin said this week, as she looks ahead to retirement next month.
For her, it’s been a dream career that started when she and a few of her fellow interns landed jobs at Methodist right out of their internship. (To this day, she counts several of those interns as among her closest friends.)
What could be better than working alongside smart, compassionate people to improve the health of sick kids? As a dietitian, she knows the value of proper nutrition – whether a modified oral diet for young pediatric patients or fortified breast milk and formula IV feedings for preemies.
In her world, nutrition is medicine.
In the neonatal unit at Riley, where she’s been for the past five years, she and three dietitians care for all of the babies admitted to the NICU. That means rounding with the care team each day, providing nutritional assessments, developing feeding protocols, working with families, researching nutrition treatments and educating new residents and fellows.
“It’s been great,” she said. “I get to learn every day, I’m challenged every day, I get to interact with fun people, I get to help the families and the babies, and I get to teach. I don’t think there could be anything better.”
In the past four-plus decades, McLaughlin, who also completed a pediatric nutrition fellowship at Riley and was instrumental in establishing the state’s Milk Bank, has been a leader in her field, presenting at innumerable conferences, publishing articles and building relationships.
“Anytime somebody needed someone to do a lecture and it was anything I knew or I could learn, I’d do it,” she said. “I still want to learn. There is not a day that goes by that I haven’t been able to learn something, and that makes it worth doing every day.”
Her passion is contagious.
“Clare was here before me, and I learned a lot from her,” said Wendy Cruse, clinical nutrition manager and Milk Lab Operations manager, describing her as a “phenomenal person, dietitian, collaborator and scholar” who has been a key contributor to newborn and pediatric nutrition management within IU Health.
“Her attention to detail, experience, insight, knowledge and compassion evoke confidence and assurance in families and clinicians alike,” Cruse said. “She is a great resource and a great teacher, and she explains the why behind what people need to be doing.”
That comes naturally to McLaughlin, a dynamic personality whose rapid-fire speech reflects her passion for patients and the collaborative approach to care that brings about healing.
But the science of nutrition also appeals to her. She went to college to study chemistry, but a class in nutrition sparked her interest.
“It made chemistry make sense,” she said.
When she started in the field, the NICU population was primarily 28- to 32-weekers, she said. Now, babies as young as 22 weeks are surviving, thanks to advancements in treatment.
Those advancements include new formulas and a new understanding of how fortified breast milk can be medicine, giving tiny babies the nutrients they need to grow.
That concept of nutrition as medicine crosses into all ages, of course. In McLaughlin’s work, she saw what it did for patients with cystic fibrosis, cancer and traumatic injuries.
She once worked with a young accident victim who suffered critical burns to her face.
“I spent five years with her, working on nutrition and helping her heal.”
In the late-1980s, she was approached by a neurologist who wanted to find out more about the benefits of a ketogenic diet for seizure control.
“It was not something well-known at the time,” she said. “I did some research and embraced that challenge. We had a family here who wanted to try it, and that child went from 100 seizures a day to fewer than 10.”
Now, 35 years later, that diet is a life-changing treatment for some people with uncontrolled seizures, reducing the need for medication.
For McLaughlin, learning and sharing information like that “is the coolest thing in the world.”
“I’m thankful for everyone I’ve had the opportunity to work with. It has added to my life experience.”
With her newfound free time, she looks forward to volunteering and traveling with her husband, Daniel – “the best guy in the whole wide world” who plays in the band Asleep by Ten.
“I plan to become a groupie for his band in retirement.”
Her last day on the job is Sept. 3, but two celebrations will mark her departure. On Aug. 23, there will be a 43rd anniversary party with the dietitian team, and on Aug. 29, there will be a reception in the Riley Simon Family Tower boardroom from 1:30 to 3 p.m., where she looks forward to seeing many current and former colleagues.