Sync Your Calendars

Welcome to the spring semester! It is hardly warm outside, but the intellectual energy inside Fagin Hall more than compensates. We start the term with the return of our students and we are ready to dive into a semester of inquiry and engagement.

Next month we will welcome the esteemed Dr. Angela Barron McBride, whose new book “The Growth and Development of Nurse Leaders” stands to become as seminal in our field as her 1973 book “The Growth and Development of Mothers.” She will present a Dean’s Lecture on February 28.

Each year we look forward to granting the unique honor of the Claire M. Fagin Distinguished Researcher Lecture and Award. With great pride, we honor Dr. Barbara Riegel, an expert in chronic illness and self-care, who will present the 2012 Fagin Lecture on April 5.

This academic year is significant in the history of nursing at Penn. Our 125th anniversary is in tandem with the quarter-century mark of our Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing, which will honor the work of nurse historian Dr. Joan Lynaugh with a symposium on April 14.

We will take interprofessionalism to another level with the April 17 symposium “Partners in Education and Practice: Stronger Teams, Better Health,” co-hosted with the Association of Academic Health Centers, Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine, and the Institute of Medicine.  The concept of interprofessionalism – bringing seemingly divergent healthcare professions together to respond to need – is more important than ever in our global 21st century.

On April 21, our LIFE practice will host the second annual “Sounds of West Philadelphia” Wellness Day. In the fall, our LIFE practice recognized internationally as being unique by Lancet editor-in-chief Dr. Richard Horton. Wellness Day is a wonderful opportunity to see why.

And, before we know it, we will close the semester with Commencement and Alumni Weekend, which will open on May 11 with the inaugural symposium for our new Center for Global Women’s Health, a most exciting endeavor and one that is close to my heart.

As always, there is much happening. As always, I hope to see you here, taking part in all that Penn Nursing has to offer.

Milestones

We at Penn Nursing are proud to share our 125th anniversary with another landmark nursing institution, the Visiting Nurse Association of Greater Philadelphia. Until its inception on March 2, 1886, “no one had ever heard of such a thing as nursing the sick poor [sic] except in hospitals,” recalled founder Mrs. William Furness Jenks. The work of visiting nurses was hard, often taking them to “run-down areas which housed the city’s workers” and where such contagions as typhoid, diphtheria, and tuberculosis were rampant.

The efforts of these pioneering women – indeed, all were women – and their visiting nurse counterparts around the country formed the foundation of home nursing and community nursing as we know them today.

The history of the VNA of Greater Philadelphia has its home here at Penn Nursing, in the premier center for nursing history in the world, the Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing. The Bates Center -- notably celebrating its 25th anniversary this year -- houses the records of the Visiting Nurse Society, and a vast collection of materials from nursing history.

The entire Bates collection – a rich array of written materials, artifacts, and photographs from nursing history -- encompasses nursing education and healthcare institutions, non-profits, and nursing luminaries. The Bates Center is open to scholars across all fields and non-academic researchers interested in nursing. It brings nursing history to life, and is a jewel of our School and our discipline. Happy anniversary to us all!

Firsts & Innovations

What does it mean to be first? Thought leadership, trailblazing, going where no one has gone before. These all describe nursing at Penn. From the start, nursing at Penn has meant being at the cutting edge, doing things differently, breaking new ground for science, for the benefit of our patients and our communities, and for future leaders in nursing. What was it like before nurses developed the evidence to manage symptoms, identified the best models to prevent illness, or helped patients through transitions and complex healthcare decisions? In short, where would healthcare be without nursing research? Nursing at Penn has led the way in these areas and many others.

Nursing at Penn always has meant thinking outside the box in our classrooms and our laboratories, at the bedside and the bench, about the very young and the very old, about the sick and the well. Nursing at Penn means influencing the world through ideas, through actions, and through policy changes.


As we open our celebration of 125 years of nursing at Penn, I share with you just a few of our innovations which have made a difference in the health of our world:

• The first nursing doctorate in the Ivy League
• The first privately funded center for nursing research in the country
• The first school at Penn and one of the first in North America to be named a World Health Organization Collaborating Center
• The first operating room nurse in the nation
• The first nurse anesthetist in Philadelphia
• The first nurse to receive the MacArthur Fellowship, known as the “genius” award
• Some of the first endowed chairs for nursing in the country
• One of the first aerospace nurses in the NASA program

Our contributions to nursing and to health are exponential. With that in mind, I invite you to celebrate 125 years of nursing at Penn by helping us assemble a list of 125 innovative faculty, students, and alumni. Share your ideas at nursalum@pobox.upenn.edu and become a fan of Penn Nursing Alumni on Facebook for weekly updates on 125 Innovators and Ideas!