Mary Breckinridge Biography
Mary Breckinridge - 2002
Mary Breckinridge's leadership dramatically improved rural health care and training for nurse-midwives. A 1910 graduate of St. Luke?s Hospital School of Nursing, New York City, she spent two years in France with post-WWI recovery efforts. There she discovered her professional calling: nursing among the poor and improving health care for women and children. After advanced studies at Teachers College (Columbia University) and further midwifery training in England, she established the Frontier Nursing Service in Kentucky in 1925 to train nurse midwives and send them out into rural communities on horseback or by foot. Under her leadership the FNS substantially reduced maternal and neonatal death rates, and became a model for health care in the U.S. and around the world.
Source :
http://www.truthaboutnursing.org/press/pioneers.html