Dr. Ildaura Murillo-Rohde was born in Panama in 1920 before immigrating to San Antonio, Texas, in 1945. She earned a nursing diploma from San Antonio’s Medical and Surgical Hospital School of Nursing (1948). There she began to recognize the disproportionately low number of Hispanic nurses and found that it impacted care delivery for Hispanic patients. Inspired to change these statistics, she obtained a BS in Psychiatric Nursing from the Teachers College at Columbia University, MA (1953) in Teaching and Curriculum Development in Psychiatric Nursing, and M. Ed. (1969) in Education and Administration from Columbia University. She obtained her PhD (1971) in Higher Education in Psychiatric Nursing and Psychology from New York University, becoming the first Hispanic nurse to achieve this feat.
She worked at Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital with Puerto Rican soldiers returning from the Korean War. She also worked at Elmhurst General Hospital in Queens, opening the psychiatric division. She also held academic, administrative, and counseling roles across the country including at Wayne County General Hospital, University of Washington (Associate Dean), and University of Antioquia, to name a few. She published “The Relationship between Puerto Rican Mother-Son Inter-personal Compatibility in the Area of Control Behavior and Adjustment in School.”
Dr. Murillo-Rohde founded the National Association of Hispanic Nurses (NAHN) where she served as president from 1976-1980. The mission was to promote and advocate for educational, professional, and leadership opportunities for Hispanic nurses. She eventually became the first Hispanic Dean at NYU’s School of Nursing, and went on to work with UNICEF, the World Health Organization, and the Federal Government. HAHN has a scholarship and educational excellence award named after her. In 1994, she was named a Living Legend of the American Academy of Nursing. She passed away in 2010, in her homeland of Panama at almost 90 years of age.
Sources:
- https://salud-america.org/dr-ildaura-murillo-rohde-latina-led-push-for-diversity-in-nursing/
- https://web.archive.org/web/20160304043222/http://www.nursing.upenn.edu/history/Documents/finding%20aids/Murillo-Rohde%20Inventory.pdf
- https://nyamcenterforhistory.org/2021/09/13/celebrating-national-hispanic-heritage-month-dr-ildaura-murillo-rohde-phd-rn-faan/
- https://web.archive.org/web/20110614135428/http://nahnnet.org/AboutNAHN.html
- https://nhcoa.org/latino-empowerment-ildaura-murillo-rohde/#:~:text=Ildaura%20Murillo-Rohde%20was%20its%20first%20president%2C%20and%20held,Health%20Organization%2C%20and%20the%20United%20States%20federal%20government.
- https://awis.org/historical-women/ildaura-murillo-rohde-phd-rn-faan/
- https://www.nursing.upenn.edu/live/files/1777-pu-n-mc-172-ildaura-murillo-rohde-papers
