Staff members are among the Foundation's most generous donors, giving because it helps the patients they serve. Contributing is also an expression of their commitment to Spartanburg Regional Healthcare System.

Throughout her career, Betty Warlick, RN, has worked hard to teach and model the kind care that her own nurses showed her as a teenager, when she was hospitalized for weeks after a horseback riding accident. She became a nurse and a compassionate advocate for patients. But further, this now-beloved figure on the campus of Spartanburg Medical Center has also become an advocate for other nurses and the healthcare system as a whole.

“I'll never forget the nurses and how good they were to me as a teenager,” she recalls of her care after a broken hip. “They taught me that patients want to know that you care for them.”

It was this experience that steered her to a lifetime of passion for nursing and for her colleagues. Staff members like Warlick are among the Foundation's most generous donors. They give because it helps the patients they serve and because it's an expression of their commitment to Spartanburg Regional Healthcare System. In addition, employees throughout the system have a direct view of the impact of the Spartanburg Regional Foundation's work.

Warlick has a more direct view than many. In her current role as director of Corporate Education, Continuing Medical Education and Language Services, she sees firsthand how donations from the community ensure that nurses have the knowledge and support they need. One of her roles is to partner with the Foundation to coordinate nursing scholarship funds for undergraduate students, as well as for SRHS nurses pursuing advanced education.

She's seen the impact of these nursing scholarships on several hundred professionals during her tenure as chair of the Foundation Nursing Scholarship Committee. As further testament to her devotion to giving, both to health care and to education, her husband, Hal, created a nursing scholarship in her honor.

Today, Warlick conducts orientation for more than 1,000 new associates annually. She coordinates hundreds of nursing students, as well as Project SEARCH, which provides job training for young adults with disabilities. She and her team also facilitate the education of professional staff through the American Heart Association, the Simulation Center and the Learning Management System. All of these experiences, as well as her childhood injury, inform her philosophy.

“We must have compassion for patients and their families,” she said. “That is absolutely paramount for having a good healthcare system.”

This philosophy extends to her own giving.

“We have a fabulous healthcare system,” she said. “And it's wonderful to see how the Foundation supports it.”