Nurse practitioners were 'Lone Rangers,' founder says
Posted almost 14 years ago by Stanley F Whittaker
By Elizabeth Landau, CNN
(CNN) -- In rural Boulder County, Colorado, Loretta Ford felt as if she were an epidemiologist, a sanitation department and a health inspector -- but in title, she was a nurse. She and colleagues carried everything, including the baby scales, as they set up temporary clinics in churches, schools and wherever else they could.
In the 1940s and '50s, there was no one else taking care of these basic community needs except Ford and her fellow public health nurses. As she gained experience, Ford realized that more nurses should be able to have specialized training so they could make basic decisions on their own about the health status of patients.
Ford, 90, the co-founder of the nurse practitioner movement, is being inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame on Saturday in Seneca Falls, New York. Thanks in large part to her efforts, there are more than 140,000 nurse practitioners working in the United States today. Many can prescribe and diagnose as doctors can, but their nursing background emphasizes health promotion and patient empowerment.
"I'm pretty proud of them. I get a lot of credit for 140,000 nurses and I don't deserve it," Ford said in September. "They're the ones who fought the good fight. They took the heat and they stood it and they've done beautifully."
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