Mary Starke Harper Distinguished Lectureship

The 2006 Recipient of the Mary Starke Harper Distinguished Lectureship Award was Loretta Ford, EdD, RN, PNP, FAAN, FAANP.

Loretta Ford, EdD, RN, PNP, FAAN, FAANP
"Our future is limitless."

Unheard of before the 1960s, nurse practitioners today play a vital role on the healthcare team. In this nation alone, more than 120,000 nurse practitioners provide care to patients of all ages and at all stages of living and dying. In large part, the nurse practitioner model owes its beginnings and its successes to an esteemed nurse leader: Loretta C. Ford, RN, EdD, FAANP, FAAN.

Ford began her nursing career in the U.S. Air Force. After three years of service, she joined the University of Colorado Schools of Medicine and Nursing, where she earned a doctorate in education and served as Chair and Professor of Public Health Nursing. She also discovered - to her dismay - that the shortage of primary care physicians in the surrounding community undermined care for children and families. A creative thinker, Ford believed that with appropriate training, the nursing role could be expanded to include, for example, well-child exams and patient education, thereby improving health care delivery.

Acting on her beliefs, Ford teamed up with the late pediatrician Henry Silver, MD, in 1965, to implement a pilot nurse practitioner training program. Incorporating research and clinical care training, the model taught nurses to factor in patients’ social, psychological, environmental and economic situations as well as their health status when developing care plans. The program began as a certificate program for students with at least a BS degree in nursing and Ford, herself, completed it to lend credibility to her efforts. It eventually became a master’s degree program and its graduates were called pediatric nurse practitioners.

Ford has said that the nurse practitioner concept at first met with resistance from some – although not all - nursing organizations, nurse educators and physicians. Determined to overcome this resistance, Ford and Silver published the positive outcomes of their training program in the American Journal of Nursing. They also conducted a survey of health needs that corroborated Ford’s experience as a public health nurse: clinical decision making by nurses improved health care, especially for mothers and children. Ford went on to publish nearly 100 articles about the value of the nurse practitioner, helping to ensure the growth of training programs and graduates throughout the country.

Because of her outstanding work in the pediatric nurse practitioner program at the University of Colorado, the University of Rochester recruited Ford in 1972 to serve as founding dean of its School of Nursing. Throughout her 14-year tenure Ford developed the unification model of nursing, which integrates clinical practice, education, and research. When the University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center celebrated the 40th anniversary of its nurse practitioner program in 2005, Ford was quoted as saying: “I believe faculty should be involved in some aspect of practice. In practice you analyze and develop hypotheses about clinical nursing problems that are relevant to improving practice and the study of it.”

Ford has received numerous awards throughout her career, including, in 2003, the Elizabeth Blackwell Award from Hobart and William Smith Colleges. Named after America’s first female physician, the award is given to a woman whose life exemplifies outstanding service to humanity. In April 2006, the University of Rochester Medical Center dedicated its new, 28,000-square-foot education wing to Ford, who said she hoped the dedication would inspire more people to go into nursing.

Ford currently lives in Florida with her husband William but travels extensively, addressing nurses and other healthcare provider audiences in the United States and abroad. A pioneer at heart, she reminds her listeners that the expertise of nurses must always cover new territory, expanding to meet real human needs. “Our future is limitless,” she says.