 
Florence Wald |
honors three from YSN
The American Academy of Nursing (AAN) recently honored three members of the Yale School of Nursing (YSN) community.
Florence Wald, former dean of YSN, was awarded the title of "Living Legend" by the AAN for her work as an outstanding educator and as founder of the U.S. hospice movement.
In addition, Linda Spoonster Schwartz, research scientist at the school, was inducted into the academy in recognition of her leadership role in advocating health-care causes for Vietnam War veterans, and YSN Professor Kathleen Knafl was made an honorary fellow of the organization for her visionary leadership in family nursing.
The AAN awards the title of "Living Legend" to those who serve as role models in the nursing field and "epitomize nursing's proud history." Wald was among four women honored this year.
Wald is a world-renowned leader in nursing research. She holds Master of Nursing and Master of Science degrees from Yale and was awarded an honorary Doctor of Medical Sciences by the University in 1995. While serving as YSN dean 1959-1968, Wald initiated and implemented numerous reforms in educational programs, guiding YSN to a new definition of nursing as a scholarly clinical discipline.
"Dean Florence Wald serves as an inspiration to us at Yale and to nurses throughout the world," says Catherine Lynch Gilliss, the current YSN dean. "Her founding of the U.S. hospice movement is an act that has touched millions of lives. Dean Wald's work serves as a model of what advanced practice nursing can do."
Aware of the need for a new institution dedicated to helping terminally ill patients and their families, Wald founded Hospice Incorporated in Branford, Connecticut, which has since become a model for hospice care in the United States and abroad.
"From the nurse's point of view hospice care is the epitome of good nursing," explained Wald. "It enables the patient to get through the end of life on their own terms. It is a holistic approach, looking at the patient as an individual, a human being. The spiritual role nurses play in the end of life process is essential to both patients and families."
For her pioneering enthusiasm, Wald was inducted into the American Nurses Association Hall of Fame in 1996, The National Women's Hall of Fame in 1998 and the Connecticut Hall of Fame in 1999. She has also been awarded YSN's Distinguished Alumni Award, the Distinguished Woman of Connecticut Award, the Founder's Award of the American Hospice Association and the first Florence S. Wald Award for Contributions to Nursing Practice of the Connecticut Nurses Association.
Now 84, Wald remains a leader in expanding the compassionate care of the dying by bringing hospice care to prison settings.
Schwartz '84 M.S.N. was inducted into the AAN in honor of her leadership role in advocating health care causes for Vietnam War veterans.
The YSN researcher has a long history of involvement in nursing and veteran organizations. Retired from the U.S. Air Force Nurse Corps and a veteran of the Vietnam War, she is an advocate and activist who has devoted her nursing practice to healing the wounds of war and improving the lives of America's 26 million veterans.
Schwartz regularly provides testimony on veteran issues to both houses of Congress, the National Academy of Science and the Environmental Protection Agency. She says she learned on her first trip to Capitol Hill "that you don't have to have all charts and graphs. When you speak the truth to power, they listen." She adds: "I've gotten better at coming in with more truth. In the past, Vietnam veterans used very poignant stories. Increasingly we are coming in with facts and figures that are even more devastating than poignant stories."
For 12 consecutive years, she was an appointed consultant to the U.S. Secretary of Veteran Affairs, working on such issues as women's affairs, the readjustment of combat veterans and care of seriously mentally ill veterans. She was instrumental in the creation of the tribute to nursing and women veterans of Vietnam that now appears on the mall in Washington, D.C. She continues her work on behalf of veterans through her TriService Nursing Research Program's funded study of the health effects of exposures and service on military women who served in Vietnam.
Throughout her career Schwartz has received numerous awards and honors. Most recently, she got a grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences for an international conference on "The Long Term Ecological and Human Consequences of the Vietnam War" which will bring together scientists from the United States and Vietnam to study the lingering effects of the war.
The AAN made Knafl an honorary member of the academy in recognition of her visionary leadership in family nursing.
A sociologist who has spent her entire career in academic nursing, Knafl is among the foremost experts in the study of families who have children with chronic illnesses. Her work on the concept of "normalization" revolutionized thinking about families and how they manage the demands of a child's chronic condition. In the past, attempts at normalization were deemed "denial," and families were urged to accept the reality of their child's condition. Knafl showed that such normalization activities are healthy and can be supported through the development of interventions to help families better manage childhood chronic illness.
"As a sociologist, I have had a longstanding interest in understanding how families rise to the challenges of having a child with a chronic illness," explains Knafl. "Early on, I realized that my colleagues in nursing not only shared many of my interests, but were in a position to make a real difference in the lives of families."
Knafl has been a mentor to young scholars who have gone on to become nurse researchers and leaders throughout the United States. In addition, she has a record of publishing data-based articles that have informed both nursing and family sciences.
In addition, Knafl has demonstrated a strong commitment to the development of nursing science, as illustrated by her leadership in the qualitative research section of the Midwest Nursing Research Society and the National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR). Knafl was a member and chair of the NINR Nursing Science Review Committee 1991-1995. Recently, she chaired the fifth International Nursing Conference that brought together over 600 nurses and other family scholars from the United States and abroad.
Among her numerous honors, Knafl was awarded an honorary membership in the Society of Pediatric Nurses in 1993, and a Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Nursing and Health Care from the American Academy of Nursing in 1997.
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