Nursing a business to its full potential. (Home Health Care) (company profile)

Nancy Dobson Martin may prefer the purples and golds of her business wardrobe to the starched whites of her R.N. uniforms. And maybe in the past few years she's administered more budgets than shots. But as business woman, Martin is a strong advocate for nurses.

"I'm proud to be a nurse," she says, raising her voice and tapping her red fingernails on the tabletop as to leave no doubt that she means it. She could talk all day about the value of the people whom society expects "to do a lot of stuff for a lot of hours in life an death situations and pay them less than three trimmers."

Martin drew upon her reserve of toughness -- and years of home care nursing experience -- when she turned entrepreneur in 1983. She opened Home Health Care of Metro Detroit, a "visiting nurse" type of service that offers intermittent care for patients in their own home.

A former Wayne State University nursing instructor who once coordinated the Michigan Cancer Foundation's home nursing care program, Martin says she thrives on activity and knows how to assert herself.

Trained in public health nursing (she holds both bachelor's and master's of science degrees in nursing), Martin says she's never worked in a hospital because "I knew better."

Not only are nurses (mostly women) dominated by physicians (mostly men) in a hospital atmosphere, she says, but hospitals simply don't offer the independence and flexibility Martin always has craved. "I couldn't possibly be happy working in a hospital. I don't want to be in a box."

The business, which since last June has been part of the ABC Home Health Services national network, is among those that have sprung up to fill voids in the current health care system. Shorther hospital stays, an aging population and other factors have combined to put more ailing people at home. Companies like Martin's, which is staffed with registered nurses, physical therapist, occupational therapists, speech pathologists, home health aides and social workers, can handle anything from weekly blood pressure checks for the home-bound elderly to mini-intensive care units for sick babies.