Birth: February 17, 1881
Death: May 16, 1965
Specialty: Nursing
Major Contributions:
Founder of the Frontier Nursing Service
Certified as a Midwife
Inducted into the American Nurses Association’s Hall of Fame
Image via the National Library of Medicine
Inspired by British nurse-midwives, Mary Breckinridge created a program that is studied today as a model of rural health and social service delivery.
The daughter of a US congressman and granddaughter of a US Vice President, Breckinridge’s early life could be considered privileged, and she was educated in the US and Europe. Sadly, her adult life was more marred with tragedy as she was widowed at the age of 26 after only two years of marriage. Earning her nursing degree after the death of her husband, she remarried a few years later. Her first child was born prematurely and did not survive, and her second child died before reaching the age of five.
The couple divorced and she devoted her life to her nursing career and improving the health of women and children. Volunteering in France during the first world war she worked alongside nurse-midwives and knew that the people of rural Kentucky were in great need of these kinds of services. Traveling around the state on horseback, she learned of the common practices of childbirth at the time and determined that a lack of prenatal care was one of the causes of the area’s high maternal mortality rates.
Returning to London she became a certified midwife and traveled to Scotland to observe a community midwifery system serving poor, rural areas. Using their decentralized structure as a model, she founded the Frontier Nursing Service to provide quality prenatal and childbirth care in patient’s homes.
Using certified nurse-midwives that traveled on horseback she was able to cover an area of about 700 square miles in southern Kentucky. Clients were able to pay the low fees in services or goods and no client was ever turned away. In 1939 she founded the Frontier Graduate School of Midwifery, which is still in operation, changing its name in 2011 to the Frontier Nursing University.
In 1982 she was inducted into the American Nurses Association’s Hall of Fame. The Mary Breckinridge Hospital, part of the Appalachian Regional Healthcare network, is considered an example of her vision and continues to improve the lives of the people in the area she once served.
Written by Angela Goad
Sources:
American Nurses Association Hall of Fame Inductees: Mary Breckinridge
Mary Breckinridge (Britannica)
Mary Breckinridge (The Truth About Nursing)
National Women’s Hall of Fame: Mary Breckinridge
See Also:
Visiting Mary Breckenridge ARH hospital