Eunice Katherine Macdonald "Kitty" Ernst (July 21, 1926 – December 28, 2021) was an American
nurse midwife and leader in the nurse-midwife movement in the United States.
Biography
Kitty Ernst was born in
Waltham, Massachusetts, on July 21, 1926, to John D. and Esther C. Macdonald.
Ernst earned her Bachelor's Degree in Education from
Hunter College
Hunter College is a public university in New York City. It is one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York and offers studies in more than one hundred undergraduate and postgraduate fields across five schools. It also admi ...
in 1957, and her Master's Degree in Public Health from
Columbia University in 1959. She was also awarded an honorary Doctor of Science from
Case Western Reserve University
Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) is a private research university in Cleveland, Ohio. Case Western Reserve was established in 1967, when Western Reserve University, founded in 1826 and named for its location in the Connecticut Western Reser ...
.
Ernst began working as a nurse-midwife at the
Frontier Nursing Service in rural
Kentucky in 1951. Her next job was at the
Maternity Center Association where she worked as a nurse-midwife and trained health workers to be midwives. Later, she was employed on the
Columbia University Faculty of Medicine then went on to be self-employed. On her own, she educated parents, did lectures, and consulting. After she started her own family, and was a field consultant, she "developed family-centered maternity care provided by an obstetrician nurse-midwife team at the Salvation Army Booth Maternity Center in Philadelphia."
She was the President of
American College of Nurse-Midwives
The American College of Nurse-Midwives (ACNM) is a professional association in the United States, formed in 1955, that represents certified nurse-midwives (CNMs) and certified midwives (CMs). Dating back to 1929, ACNM is the leading example for ...
(ACNM) from 1961-1963 and again from 2007-2008.
She received the 1981 Martha Mae Eliot Award, presented by the Maternal and Child Health Section of the
American Public Health Association. “The Martha May Eliot Award, established in 1964, honors unusual and exceptional achievement in the field of maternal and child health.”
Along with the Martha Mae Elliot Award, she received the Hatti Hemschemeyer Award from the American College of Nurse-Midwives and the Maternity Center Medal for Distinguished Service.
Ernst helped to establish delivery systems, alternative birthing centers, and nurse-midwifery services where none previously existed. She expanded the nurse-midwife field, and by the end of the 1970s, a total of 21 basic nurse-midwifery educational programs had been established.
On December 28, 2021, Ernst died at her home in
Perkiomenville, Pennsylvania. She was predeceased by her husband Albert T. Ernst, Sr. on February 2, 2011, and her five brothers and three sisters.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ernst, Eunice Katherine M.
1926 births
2021 deaths
American midwives
21st-century American women
People from Waltham, Massachusetts