Reference
- Mary Breckinridge (1881–1965)The founder of the Frontier Nursing Service, Mary Breckinridge was a pioneering advocate for American midwifery and for the establishment of neonatal and childhood medical care that dramatically reduced mortality rates of mothers and children.
She grew up in Washington, D.C., where her father was an Arkansas congressman, and in St. Petersburg, Russia, where he served as U.S. minister to Russia. She was educated in private schools in Lausanne, Switzerland, and Stamford, Connecticut. After marrying Henry Ruffner in 1904, who died in 1906, Breckinridge earned a nursing degree from Saint Luke's Hospital School of Nursing in New York City in 1910. She married Richard Ryan Thompson in 1912. The couple had two children, but one was born prematurely and did not survive, and two years later, their son died of appendicitis. Breckinridge's husband was unfaithful, and they were divorced in 1920.
Breckinridge devoted herself to nursing to cope with the pain of her children's deaths and her divorce. She joined the American Committee for Devastated France in the aftermath of World War I, where she met French and British nursemidwives, and realized that similarly trained nurses could meet the health care needs of rural America. She traveled to the Hebrides in Scotland in 1924 to observe models of health services in remote, rural areas. Since no midwifery course was then offered in the United States, Breckinridge received the training she needed at the British Hospital for Mothers and Babies. She returned to the United States in 1925, moved to Leslie County, Kentucky, and founded the Kentucky Committee for Mothers and Babies, which was renamed the Frontier Nursing Service. The introduction of nurse-midwives into the region brought its maternal and neonatal death rate well below the national average. Breckinridge directed the service, which led to the founding in 1929 of the American Association of Nurse-Midwives, and edited its journal while traveling around the country fundraising and promoting the Frontier Nurse Service. In 1939, she established the Frontier Graduate School of Midwifery, a training program for nurse-midwives...
- Credo Reference This link opens in a new window
This link opens in a new window
This link opens in a new window
Credo Reference is an easy-to-use tool for starting research. Gather background information on your topic from hundreds of full-text encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauri, quotations, and subject-specific titles, as well as 500,000+ images and audio files and over 1,000 videos.
Perspectives
Wide Neighborhoods
Wide Neighborhoods is the autobiography of Mary Breckinridge, the remarkable founder of the Frontier Nursing Service. It is equally the story of the unique organization she founded in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky in 1925--the Frontier Nursing Service. Riding out on horseback, the FNS nurse-midwives, the first of their profession in this country, proved that high mortality rates and malnutrition need not be the norm in remote rural areas. The FNS, through its example and through the graduates of tis school of midwifery and family nursing, has exerted a lasting influence on family health care throughout the world.
Mary Breckinridge
In 1925 Mary Breckinridge (1881-1965) founded the Frontier Nursing Service (FNS), a public health organization in eastern Kentucky providing nurses on horseback to reach families who otherwise would not receive health care. Through this public health organization, she introduced nurse-midwifery to the United States and created a highly successful, cost-effective model for rural health care delivery that has been replicated throughout the world. In this first comprehensive biography of the FNS founder, Melanie Beals Goan provides a revealing look at the challenges Breckinridge faced as she sought reform and the contradictions she embodied. Goan explores Breckinridge's perspective on gender roles, her charisma, her sense of obligation to live a life of service, her eccentricity, her religiosity, and her application of professionalized, science-based health care ideas. Highly intelligent and creative, Breckinridge also suffered from depression, was by modern standards racist, and fought progress as she aged--sometimes to the detriment of those she served. Breckinridge optimistically believed that she could change the world by providing health care to women and children. She ultimately changed just one corner of the world, but her experience continues to provide powerful lessons about the possibilities and the limitations of reform.
The Frontier Nursing Service
There was a time when the average American woman was more likely to die from childbirth than from any other condition except tuberculosis. This was especially true in areas where hospitals and quality medical care were scarce or nonexistent. But deep in the rolling hills of eastern Kentucky's Cumberland Range, one woman almost single-handedly changed those dismal figures. Her name was Mary Breckenridge, and her goal was to introduce quality, professionally trained midwifery to the United States. The Frontier Nursing Service, opened in 1925 in Leslie County, Kentucky, set out to meet the health needs of women and infants in one of the poorest regions of America.This book tells the story of Breckenridge's unparalleled dedication to midwifery and provides a historical overview of the first 40 years of the Frontier Nursing Service. The story is told in human terms, focusing on how such a successful organization was built out of commitment and compassion against all odds. It covers dozens of midwife cases, examining the fascinating interaction between the local residents and the brave nurse-midwives who rode first on horseback, later in Jeeps and other forms of transport, to improve the lives of eastern Kentucky families and to reverse the highest infant mortality rate in the country.
Mary Breckinridge, Steady in the Saddle: Resilient Leadership and the Frontier Nursing Service
- Mary Breckinridge, Steady in the Saddle: Resilient Leadership and the Frontier Nursing ServiceMary Breckinridge’s life and work provide a historical exemplar of the ways in which one nursing leader applied these principles as she worked doggedly to overcome family tragedies, educational shortfalls, personal health challenges, and seemingly insurmountable challenges of weather, geography, war, and finances to establish the Frontier Nursing Service and the Frontier Graduate School of Midwifery...
Nurse's Saddlebag
- Nurse's SaddlebagJust a few generations ago, healthcare in Eastern Kentucky was practically non-existent. But in 1925, Mary Breckinridge, at the age of 44 and working out of a log cabin in Hyden, Kentucky, pioneered the Frontier Nursing Service to help newborn babies and mothers.
Online Resources
- History, organization and the changing culture of care: a historical analysis of the Frontier Nursing ServiceThe aim of this study was to examine the organizational shift at the Frontier Nursing Service from all female, nurse run and community-people focused to the corporate-consumer focus adopted everywhere else and the accompanying work environment issues this shift brought to the organization.
- MARY BRECKINRIDGE, THE FRONTIER NURSING SERVICE AND THE INTRODUCTION OF NURSE-MIDWIFERY IN THE UNITED STATESRead more about Mary Breckinridge's career as a nurse in America's frontier as well as the history of midwifery in the United States.
- Maternity in the MountainsRead more about the work of Mary Breckinridge among the frontier people in her own words.
The Forgotten Frontier
- The Forgotten FrontierMary Breckinridge founded the Frontier Nursing Service in 1925 as a project to demonstrate the delivery of accessible and affordable health care in a rural population of Kentucky. Breckinridge's cousin, Mary Marvin Breckinridge, was an accomplished photographer and used her artistic talents to aid her cousin's mission.