Chicago and nursing career: Spotlight on Angela McPhillips

Readers of the Beacon might have noticed a new byline in last week’s paper; Angela McPhillips is the newest edition to the Boca Beacon and Gasparilla Magazine team, bringing with her a fresh perspective, great enthusiasm and new content to keep an eye out for. 

A lifelong Chicagoan, McPhillips grew up with grandparents and parents who immigrated to the United States in the 60s from Poland.

“I was raised more Americanized because my parents went to school as young children, and so that’s how they learned the language,” she said. “But my grandparents never learned English, so I have a working basic knowledge of Polish. I wish I was more fluent, but it’s a very challenging language. It’s similar to Ukrainian.”

McPhillips was raised on the South Side of Chicago near Midway Airport, and her father was a Chicago police officer for 25 years until his retirement in 2021. 

“We always had to live in the city during my dad’s time on the police force,” McPhillips said. “My brother is a Chicago firefighter and my sister-in-law is a Chicago police officer, so they still have residency restrictions. But my dad’s retirement a few years ago was the catalyst for our move here. My parents are basically hybrid snowbirds, alternating a few months between Florida and Chicago.”

McPhillips attended all of her schooling in Chicago. 

“During my time in Chicago Public Schools, I did the science fair every year, which was not that big of a deal, but kind of a game changer for me, because participating in the science fair allowed me to apply to a pool of scholarships that were only open to science fair participants,” she said. “And I was awarded the only full scholarship for the University of Illinois Chicago, which is where I ended up going. So I had the first four years of my college education covered. Going to college was huge, as my brother and I were the first-generation college students in our family.” 

There, she earned her Bachelor of Science in Nursing and started her fulfilling and unique nursing career.

“I lived at home for all of my college studies because I was not a party animal,” she joked. “I was, and still am, a nerd in its truest form.”

After earning her degree, McPhillips started her first job in a pediatric emergency room in a level-one trauma center in Chicago. 

“As a mom, I probably could not do it now,” she said, “but back then, my heartstrings were able to handle the challenges of that type of nursing. And it was in that job that I became very aware of health disparities and the lack of primary care, especially among inner-city kids.”

That experience drew her to community and public health nursing, and she earned her Master of Science in Nursing degree from UIC. Around that time, McPhillips began working for Chicago Public Schools as a certified school nurse while maintaining her clinical practice in the pediatric emergency room. 

“I spent several years doing that, and even serendipitously ended up working as the certified school nurse at the high school that I attended,” she said.

From there, she was recruited to teach at her alma mater, the University of Illinois Chicago. She taught in UIC’s school nurse certification program as well as the undergraduate community health classes. 

“I really built up the community health clinical experiences that were available to nursing students,” McPhillips said. “I helped establish a more structured clinical experience with Chicago Public Schools so that these future nurses could learn about school nursing. I also established and expanded non-bedside clinical opportunities in settings like homeless shelters, home health, public health departments, care coordination for children with special health care needs and mobile health clinics. These experiences helped my students appreciate how nurses can support patients and populations outside the four walls of a hospital.”

She was brought on board to teach at the university level with the caveat that she would earn her Doctorate of Nursing Practice degree, which is different from a PhD in nursing.

“PhD-prepared nurses generate the research, so they’re the ones who design and implement research studies, whereas Doctors of Nursing Practice examine that research, evaluate it and then bridge the gap from research to practice by changing policies, protocols and systems to better align with evidence-based standards,” she said. The focus of her academic nursing career was supporting students with disabilities and special healthcare needs in the school and community settings. Her work was inspired by her uncle, who has Down Syndrome. 

McPhillips’ career shifted when she decided to start a family of her own. She met her husband, who was also part of a long-standing Chicago area family, in their mid-20s and the two got married in their early 30s.

“Then less than a year later, we got our honeymoon baby, my son, Liam,” she said. “We both wanted children – so our two kids, Liam and Evelyn, are a true blessing.”

At this point, she had gotten her doctorate and was teaching undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate nurses.

“It was just a joy to nurture and guide future nurses,” she said. “It was very, very fulfilling for me. But then COVID happened, I had my kids, and my priorities shifted. The world changed, and I had to reevaluate how I wanted to spend my time and what was bringing me joy.”

Liam was born in February 2020, a month before COVID shut the world down. 

“He got to meet only, like a handful of family and friends in person, because it was so unknown,” McPhillips said. “There was so much that we didn’t know about the virus and we didn’t want to take any risks. Like everyone, we were just trying to do our best to stay safe. That meant a lot of time inside, a very long winter, and social isolation.”

The next fall, McPhillips went back to teaching, but COVID forced much of her job to shift online, which was a challenge for students and educators everywhere. And then, about a year after Liam was born, McPhillips got pregnant with her daughter, Evelyn. 

“They’re a year and a half apart,” she said. “COVID had loosened up a little bit by then, but that year and a half was just really challenging, being stuck in the house, the dreadfully long winters, the terrible weather, nowhere to go besides upstairs or the basement.”

As the pandemic ebbed, the family went on a trip to Manasota Key, where McPhillips’ family had been vacationing for more than a decade.

 “We got back from that trip, and we’re like, ‘You know what? Why don’t we move here?’” she said. “So, then the next year progressed, and we got lots of indicators that this was going to be the best choice for us, and so we were the trailblazers in our family, and we packed up. And at the same time, once my parents realized we were serious, that kind of lit the fire for them to start their search down here.”

McPhillips’ parents bought a house in Port Charlotte first, and serendipitously the house across the street became available. A couple from Utah had just remodeled the house before the wife decided she didn’t want to live in Florida after all.

“My husband jokingly told the neighbor, ‘Hey, if you ever sell this house, we’ll buy it from you’” she said. “Four weeks later, he knocks on the door and asked if we wanted to buy the house.”

Shortly before the move, McPhillips had stopped teaching to be a stay-at-home mom. 

“I enjoyed my stay-at-home mom era, up until my kids were three and four. So, it was last year that I kind of went back to the drawing board,” she said. “I didn’t want to go back to teaching, because it was not going to fill my cup the way it used to. I didn’t want to go back to school nursing, and so that led me to discover freelance writing as a nurse, which is a niche for nurses to create health-related educational content for online health platforms, whether it’s hospital systems or health and wellness brands.”

Since then, she has expanded her freelance gig and now writes for a popular kids’ vitamin brand, Everyday Health, and she recently started working with a startup that supports infant gut health. And now she is also writing for the Boca Beacon and Gasparilla Magazine.

McPhillips and her husband, Billy, also own and operate New Wave Window Cleaning, with a growing number of clients on the island. Liam just started at The Island School and Evelyn is at the Boca Grande Preschool.

When they’re not busy with work or school, the family enjoys the beach and spending time outdoors. After three years in the area, they’ve begun a new chapter in Boca Grande – becoming familiar faces you’ll be seeing much more often around town.