Annie Warburton Goodrich was an American nurse, academic, and educator.
Background
Goodrich was born on February 6, 1866, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, the daughter of Samuel Griswold Goodrich and Annie Williams Butler Goodrich. Because of her father's job as a representative of the Equitable Life Assurance Society, the family moved from New Brunswick to New York City and in 1880 to London, England, where Samuel Goodrich supervised Equitable's British account. The family was in comfortable circumstances until the father's illness and death shortly after they returned to Hartford, Connecticut, in 1885.
Education
The Goodrich children were tutored and attended private schools. In 1890 Goodrich entered the New York Hospital School of Nursing in New York City. There she seems to have attracted special notice from George P. Ludham, the superintendent, Irene Sutcliffe, superintendent of nurses, and Lillian Wald, then a head nurse. She graduated in 1892.
Career
When the family fortunes declined, Goodrich became a companion of Miss A. S. C. Blake of Boston and, in this capacity, enjoyed the social life of that city as well as travel abroad. But she soon returned to Hartford in order to help care for her ailing maternal grandparents. During this period, after the death of Dr. John Butler, her grandfather, she decided to study nursing. After attaining her diploma in 1892, Goodrich received an appointment to direct the nursing service at the Post-Graduate Hospital in New York City, where, although not director of the school of nursing, she did a little teaching. She is said to have been a born teacher and to have demonstrated to student nurses "intelligent and tender care of patients. " After spending seven years at Post-Graduate Hospital, Goodrich devoted the next ten years to administering the nursing services and schools of nursing at three other New York hospitals - St. Luke's, New York, and Bellevue. At the same time she was active in international, national, state, and local nursing organizations. Eventually she was president of the major ones. She also was active in woman suffrage. In 1910 Goodrich became inspector of nurse training schools under the Department of Education of the State of New York. She not only raised the standards of nursing education in the state but also began to proclaim her belief that nursing schools belonged in colleges and universities. From 1904 to 1913 Goodrich had been a lecturer at Teachers College, Columbia University. In 1914 she accepted an assistant professorship in the Department of Nursing and Health there, a position she held until 1923. In 1919 she combined her teaching duties with the directorship of the Visiting Nurse Service at Henry Street Settlement in New York City. After the entrance of the United States into World War I, Goodrich served as chief inspector of army hospitals in the United States. Later she was appointed dean of the Army School of Nursing, a program she designed to provide professional nursing services for the military. Goodrich returned to the directorship of the Visiting Nurse Service in 1919 but in 1923 was named dean of the new Yale University School of Nursing. The program at Yale, which soon required a bachelor's degree for admission, became known worldwide. Goodrich said it was a case of "the dream and the dreamer brought together. " She served at Yale until 1934. Even after she retired to her house in Colchester, Connecticut, Goodrich continued to be in demand as a speaker and consultant. Goodrich died in Cobalt, Connecticut on December 31, 1954. Her influence is still evident at the Yale Nursing School, where the Annie W. Goodrich Professorship serves as a reminder of the school's first dean.