Remembering Dr. Loretta Ford

Please accept this blog as a eulogy and memorial to the founder of Nurse Practitioners. Thank you, AANP, for sharing this information that we are passing on, remembering a truly phenomenal colleague. See the AANP Site Here.

Please take a moment to honor the legacy of the co-founder of the nurse practitioner role, the late Dr. Loretta Ford.

Loretta Cecelia Pfingstel—known by nurse practitioners (NPs) the world over as Dr. Loretta “Lee” Ford, EdD, RN, PNP, NP-C, CRNP, FAAN, FAANP—was born in the Bronx borough of New York City on Dec. 28, 1920. At age 104, Ford passed away on Jan. 22, 2025, leaving a remarkable legacy. Throughout her life, Ford blazed an unprecedented path, one that would include service to country, patients, students, and finally to the many practitioners of the nursing role she co-founded with Dr. Henry Silver, MD, in 1965.

What NPs might not know about Ford is that, like so many other innovators, she initially planned on going in a different direction when first considering a career. “Originally, I wanted to be a teacher,” Ford said in a 2015 interview with Craig Collins for the American Association of Nurse Practitioners^®. “But we didn’t have the family resources.” Fortunately, after what must have been an initial disappointment, Ford found her passion when she enrolled in the nursing program at Middlesex General Hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey. “The [nursing program] was an opportunity to learn something, so I went in as a nurse’s aide,” remembered Ford. “It was part of the school program. I lived with a student and read all her books, so when I went into nursing school—you had to be 18—I was ready. And by that time, of course, I really enjoyed nursing, and that was it.”

Devoted to Service

Ford joined the Visiting Nurse Service in New Jersey when her life plans were interrupted by America’s entry into World War II. The war called many young men into service, including Ford’s fiancée, who was tragically killed in battle. Continuing in that same tradition of sacrifice and bravery, Ford herself joined the Air Force and rose to the rank of first lieutenant. When the war ended, Ford had served three years and earned her nursing diploma.

Following the tenets of the modern Nightingale Pledge—“May my life be devoted to service and to the high ideals of the nursing profession”—Ford began her post-war career administering to populations in her home of Boulder, Colorado, first on the staff of the Public Health Nursing Service and then as director of nursing for the Boulder City-County Health Department.  According to a CNN story on Ford that aired in 2011, “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.”

While advancing in her career, Ford continued in her love of learning and obtained a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Colorado-Boulder in 1949, followed by a Master of Science in nursing in 1951. In 1955, Ford was appointed assistant professor at the University of Colorado College of Nursing (CU Nursing) in Denver, and over the next six years, she would earn her Ph.D. in nursing education from the University of Colorado-Boulder before becoming a full professor at CU Nursing. By her mid-40s, Ford was perfectly set up to enjoy a steady career as an academic and a nurse—and made history at the same time.

Founding the NP Role

In a piece titled “Reflections on 50 Years of Change,” Ford wrote: “Those days, the 1960s, created an enabling environment for change. The political, professional, and social environments were turbulent and chaotic and provided a perfect opportunity to innovate. In graduate nursing education, change was in the air from the focus on the functional roles of teachers, supervisors, and administrators to preparing advanced practice nurses.” The federal goal of expanding health care would transform nursing on a local level, and Ford sensed an opportunity to better reach patients. “Because public health nursing (PHN) was my special interest, I was engaged in identifying the clinical roles of PHNs, particularly in family health,” wrote Ford. “Much of our work was with children and families in the community. Well-child clinics seemed like a good place to start.”

Taking lessons from a Master of Science in nursing (MSN) program that failed to take flight at Duke University in 1958, Ford began working with Sliver, a pediatrician, to help more patients access high-quality health care. Their joint program began at the University of Colorado and pinpointed a lack of health care access in an especially vulnerable population—children. “We had a dire need in the community for child health clinic care, which was oriented toward growth and development,” said Ford in a 2022 interview. “Nurses could do that; I knew we could, but I wanted to demonstrate it.”

The result was the first NP program, and it was immediately met with acclaim—“Students were so enthusiastic about the NP role, and the patients accepted it very early,” she stated in that same interview—and the kind of pushback that tends to greet novel and groundbreaking programs of any kind. Ford stated that some saw fit to react to her and Silver’s program with “criticism, skepticism, and suspicion.” Unbowed, Ford and Silver continued to advocate for a curriculum designed to treat the whole patient through a comprehensive and balanced set of skills. Kim Curry, PhD, FNP-C, FAANP, former editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners, puts it this way: “Like many visionaries, she paid a price for moving the bar, but she persevered until the NP role became a national, then international, movement.”

Ford pivoted to the University of Rochester in 1972 and became a founding dean at their school of nursing. It was here that Ford put forth the “unification model of nursing,” an approach that considers a holistic combination of nursing education, research, and practice in treating patients. The next year, 65 NP programs were available to students nationwide, and in 1977 the Rural Health Clinic Services Act “marked the first recognition of NPs as a professional group.” In 1985, Ford retired from practice, though her contribution to the NP role would extend to authoring more than 100 publications on various issues concerning the nursing field and NPs specifically. She also continued her work as an educator, becoming a visiting professor at St. Luke’s College of Nursing in Tokyo, the University of Washington, and other institutes of higher learning. In 1995, the University of Rochester honored Ford by creating an endowed chair in her name. In 2011, she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame, and she was presented with the Surgeon General’s Medallion in 2020.

Inspiring Generations of Nursing Greatness

The best tribute to Ford may be to follow her example as a health care leader who recognizes and seizes opportunity. “It is nursing’s chance to grab the gold ring and innovate, inquire, invent, and inspire this power shift to truly patient-centered care serving the public’s interest and the nation’s health, security, and economic growth,” she concluded in “Reflections on 50 Years of Change,” and then leaves us with this charge: “The time is ripe for NP leaders to seize the moment.”