title: Thoughts about nursing.
abstract: A graduate of Quincy City (Massachusetts) Hospital School of Nursing and holding the BS degree from Teachers College, Columbia University and the MS degree from Harvard University, Dorothy Smith was dean of the College of Nursing and chief of nursing practice at the J. Hillis Miller Health Center, University of Florida, Gainesville from 1956 to 1972. In that capacity, Smith pioneered the development of the unified model of nursing education and practice in which nursing faculty provided the clinical, scholarly and administrative leadership in the teaching hospital to create an environment for students to learn professional nursing practice by example. The unification model at the University of Florida has been replicated in varying degrees in many of the nation's leading health sciences centers. Dorothy Smith, probably more than any other single nurse leader in America, influenced nursing education's renewed commitment to clinical nursing--a commitment that eventually spawned clinical nurse specialists and nurse practitioners, organizational reforms in hospitals that promoted professional nursing practice, and the evolution of clinical nursing research.
authors.affiliation: College of Nursing, University of Florida, Gainesville.
authors.forename: D M
authors.initials: DM
authors.lastname: Smith
mesh_terms: D015400:Clinical Nursing Research; D003479:Curriculum; D004506:Education, Nursing; D016294:Models, Nursing; D009729:Nursing; D009732:Nursing Care