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Denise C. Murphy, RN, DrPH, COHN
Following graduation, Denise worked in the Emergency Room of Jacobi hospital. In the sixties, she joined the Peace Corps and lived/worked in a remote village in West Africa for two years. She then traveled to India by cattle boat and lived there for a year visiting Hindu temples. During that period she discovered Dharmsala in Northern India and spent three months living with exiled Tibetans at the refugee camp and set up a library for the children with the many multilingual, donated books. Inherent in this environment was ‘seeing’ Buddhism on a daily basis and ultimately being invited to be photographed with a young Dalai Lama prior to leaving the area.
One year later she arrived back in NYC after spending that time traveling overland through all of the Middle East, Europe, etc as she made her way from Bombay to London. Once home she pursued her chosen profession in health care and earned a Masters’ and Doctorate in Public Health from Columbia University.
Subsequently, she received a fellowship from the CDC and spent two years as an epidemiologist with NIOSH. She was then invited to join the faculty of Hunter College where she established & directed a graduate program in Occupational Health Nursing. In 1987 she served as full-time occupational health consultant to the USPHS, Region II. Prior to becoming the graduate recruiter at Hunter-Bellevue (2006), Denise spent 13 years as Infection Control Coordinator for one of the NYU health care centers. During that period she published her well-reviewed book entitled Ergonomics and the Dental Care Worker.
She has received numerous professional awards including a special recognition plaque from OSHA for her ‘tireless work as an employee-advocate’, was chosen Occupational Health Nurse of the Year in 1999, the Distinguished Alumna from the Bellevue School of Nursing, and was inducted into the Hunter College Hall of Fame in 2006.
She was co-owner of the ‘Crazy Ladies’ feminist bookstore in Cincinnati, a co-founder of the New York Haiku-kai, trained in ‘Constructive Living’ (a Japanese psychotherapy), teaches English as a second language at the International Center and studied at a Zen Monastery upstate for 15 months.
After a career of working, teaching, directing and publishing in nursing, she semi-retired and now works once a week at RMA (the Rubin Museum of (Himalayan) Art) as a volunteer guide. Currently putting the final touches on her lecture/tour Integration of Tibetan Medicine and Art. In March 2009, (in collaboration with ‘Artists for Alzheimer’s’) she will be initiating special tours for people with Alzheimer’s (and their care-givers) with an end goal of evaluating the impact of art on memory and/or other symptoms.
NB: professional CV available upon request!
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