Dr. Brodie enjoyed a long and prolific career in nursing and made significant strides in so many areas: as part of the nurse practitioner movement, in pediatrics, graduate nursing education, and as a champion of nursing history. She taught legions of students at UVA between 1970 and 2003, and the Bjoring Center—one of just three endowed nursing history centers in the United States—is but one of her legacies.

In the classroom and across clinical settings, Dr. Brodie touched the lives of hundreds of students and mentees during her 45-year tenure at UVA, many of whom have gone on to influence nursing education and practice. A pioneer in the nurse practitioner (NP) movement of the 1960s and `70s, Dr. Brodie developed the first graduate-level pediatric NP program in Virginia—and in the South—in 1972, then led the development and expansion of UVA’s emergency, adult, and family NP programs. With federal funding, she implemented a UVA program that prepared faculty as nurse practitioners and worked closely on legislation in Virginia that allowed nurse practitioners greater practice independence and prescriptive authority. As a nursing professor, Dr. Brodie educated scores of nurse practitioners and was instrumental in developing and expanding NP education across Virginia and beyond.

Dr. Brodie was perhaps best known, though, for her love and support of nursing history. At UVA, she made nursing history an integral and required component for every student enrolled in the School’s PhD program, and incorporated nursing history courses across both master’s and undergraduate programs, cores that continue today. Beyond UVA, she helped found the American Association of the History of Nursing in 1981, served as its president from 1990 to 1992, and, with fellow historians, launched the Nursing History Review in 1993.

When fully funded, the Barbara M. Brodie Faculty Fund will support one of the country’s first chairs in nursing history.

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Dr. Brodie is the author of Mr. Jefferson’s Nurses: The History of the University of Virginia School of Nursing, 1901-2001, and, with Arlene Keeling and John Kirshgessner, The Voice of Professional Nursing Education: A 40 Year History of the American Association of Colleges of Nursing. She was inducted into the American Academy of Nursing in 1990, earned a Distinguished Professor Award from the UVA Alumni Association in 2002, and was named an AAN “Living Legend” in 2009.

Dr. Brodie—who earned degrees from Loyola University, Boston University, and Michigan State University—leaves behind friends, family, and a loyal group of former students and mentees who established the 20-member “Friends of Brodie” society in 1988, a critical assembly of devoted alumni that has raised more than $830,000, and distributed well over a half-million dollars in scholarship support to 62 nurse practitioner and doctoral students across its history. The Friends of Brodie group has not only been instrumental in celebrating Dr. Brodie's impact during her long and fruitful life, but their work also assures that her legacy will include continued, sustained support for nursing graduate students who pursue research topics in history and beyond. We are proud and grateful to each of them individually and collectively.

• read "Looking Back to Look Ahead" (a feature on nursing history's place in UVA's nursing curricula from Virginia magazine, 2013)

The Friends of Brodie group has not only been instrumental in celebrating Dr. Brodie's impact during her long and fruitful life, but their work also assures that her legacy will include continued, sustained support for nursing graduate students who pursue research topics in history and beyond. We are proud and grateful to each of them individually and collectively.

Dean Marianne Baernholdt

At UVA School of Nursing, nursing history continues to be essential, and Dr. Brodie's legacy reminds us of the powerful lessons that history provides. Wrote Brodie in a 1997 Windows in Time:

“The study of nursing history helps us to understand that some problems do not easily disappear and that solutions devised by one generation may cause new challenges for future generations. It also teaches us that change is constant, and every generation of nurse must face challenges that demand resolution. How we will re-design nursing for the 21st century will, in many ways, depend on how carefully we learn from the past.”

A link to Hill & Wood Funeral Services' obituary is here. Those wishing to make a gift in Dr. Brodie’s memory may do so online at this link, or by mail, noting that the gift is to support the Brodie Faculty Fund (#21043). Mailed donations may be sent to UVA School of Nursing, P.O. Box 800826, Charlottesville, VA, 22908-0826. 

We will all miss Dr. Brodie’s fierce passion, wit, and devotion, and have already begun planning a celebration of life event at the School in April, 2023, as well as a special feature story on her life, penned by the Friends of Brodie members who knew her best, in the spring 2023 Virginia Nursing Legacy. She will live on at our School and well beyond.

Be well,

Marianne Baernholdt, PhD, RN, MPH, FAAN
Sadie Heath Cabaniss Professor of Nursing and Dean
UVA School of Nursing