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!

The Power of Nursing Science

Nursing is a discipline that affects people one-by-one, community-by-community, and nation-by-nation. As nurses, we take seriously our moral commitment to the world to work toward the health and well-being of individuals and populations.

I recently participated in an initiative called the Global Advancement of Practice and Research in Nursing (GAPRIN), which was co-sponsored by the U.S. Department of State and the National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR).  I was one of two leading U.S. academic nurses invited to travel with a delegation to Bangladesh where nurses, for the first time, were invited into the boardroom to join discussions with health care leaders from around the word. Our purpose was to empower and catalyze nurse leaders to guide others in creating an evidence based culture and a more person centered approach to health care.  We met with governmental officials, academicians, and clinicians to discuss the importance of building strong nurse training programs in research and clinical practice that evolve into lifelong career paths for nurses. The outcome was remarkable.

In developing nations like Bangladesh, the concept of nursing research is novel, even unheard of. After hearing about the significance of nursing research in producing the evidence for quality care, the Executive Director of ICDDR,B (International Centre for Diarrheal Disease Research, Bangladesh), Dr. Alejandro Cravioto, committed $25,000 for competitive proposals in nursing research – the first such funding for nursing research in Bangladesh. The NINR and the U.S. Department of State will support nurses in Bangladesh in developing research programs as well as in empowering nurses to use evidence in their practice.

Together we will start to build an aspect of nursing that is critical for Bangladesh and for every country in the world – the capacity for nursing science.