Frontier Nursing Service
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The Frontier Nursing Service provides healthcare services to rural, underserved populations and educates nurse-midwives.
The Service maintains six rural healthcare clinics in eastern Kentucky, the Mary Breckinridge Hospital, the Mary Breckinridge Home Health Agency, the Frontier School of Midwifery and Family Nursing and the Bed and Breakfast Inn at Wendover, Kentucky.
[edit] History
The organization was founded in 1925 in Leslie County, Kentucky by Mary Breckinridge (Lived: 1881-1965; Director: 1925-1965) to provide healthcare for children in remote rural areas. Breckinridge was moved to this work by the deaths of her own two children. Frontier Nursing Service was the first group in the United States to employ nurses who are also qualified midwives.
The Frontier Nursing Service grew rapidly during its first five years. With the help of two nurses, Breckinridge opened the group’s first clinic in Hyden, Kentucky in 1925. By December of that year Breckinridge had raised a log house in Wendover, Kentucky, called the Big House, that became her home the Frontier Nursing Service’s headquarters. The Hyden Hospital and Health Center opened its doors in 1928 and followed by nine outpost nursing centers in Leslie County and the Red Bird River section of Clay County, Kentucky.
Upon the outbreak of World War II Breckinridge no longer could send American nurses to Britain where they had been going for midwifery training. To prevent this from slowing its operations, the Frontier Nursing Service quickly established the Frontier Graduate School of Midwifery. The first class matriculated in November 1939, and the school has operated ever since. In 1970, the school’s name was changed to the Frontier School of Midwifery and Family Nursing (FSMFN); today it offers distance education to train its students. The Frontier Nursing Service was the subject of the 1931 documentary film, The Forgotten Frontier.
[edit] Impact
During its first thirty years of operation, all of the Frontier Nursing Service's maternal and infant outcome statistics were better than for the country as a whole. For example:
- The maternal mortality rate for Frontier Nursing Services was 9.1 per 10,000 births, compared with 34 per 10,000 births for the United States as a whole.
- Only 3.8 percent of babies tended by the Frontier Nursing Service had low birth weight, compared with 7.6 percent for the country overall.
By 1958, Frontier Nursing Service nurse-midwives had attended over 10,000 births
In 1975, the Service opened the forty-bed Mary Breckinridge Hospital and Health Center in Leslie County. It is still in operation.
