Henry K. Silver (1918–1991) was an American pediatrician who influenced the early development of the physician assistant and

nurse practitioner A nurse practitioner (NP) is an advanced practice registered nurse and a type of mid-level practitioner. NPs are trained to assess patient needs, order and interpret diagnostic and laboratory tests, diagnose disease, formulate and prescribe ...

roles in the United States. Silver co-created the nation's first pediatric nurse practitioner education program in the 1960s along with Nurse Educator Loretta Ford, and he helped establish a pediatric physician assistant program a few years later. In his later career, Silver studied and published on the abuse of medical students by physicians.

Biography

Henry Silver was born in

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, largest city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the List of United States cities by population, sixth-largest city i ...

in 1918. He attended medical school at the

University of California at Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant uni ...

. Silver served on the faculty at the University of California Medical School and

Yale University School of Medicine The Yale School of Medicine is the graduate medical school at Yale University, a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. It was founded in 1810 as the Medical Institution of Yale College and formally opened in 1813. The primary te ...

early in his career. In 1957, Silver joined the

University of Colorado School of Medicine The University of Colorado School of Medicine is the medical school of the University of Colorado system. It is located at the Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora, Colorado, one of the four University of Colorado campuses, six miles east of downtow ...

. From 1978 to his death, Silver served as the medical school's associate dean of admissions. While at Colorado, he created a

pediatric nurse practitioner A pediatric nurse practitioner (PNP) is a nurse practitioner who specializes in care for newborns, infants, toddlers, pre-schoolers, school-aged children, adolescents, and young adults. Nurse practitioners have an in-depth knowledge and experie ...

(PNP) program in 1964, which represented the first nurse practitioner program in the nation. The PNP program opened the next year. The successful utilization of the program's nurse practitioners led to Silver's interest in creating physician assistant (PA) training programs. A school nurse practitioner was later created at Colorado as well. Silver founded the pediatric PA program at Colorado in 1969. The initial concept behind the PA program was to train pediatric providers with five years of education after high school rather than the eleven years that it took to become a pediatrician. The program, designed to mitigate a physician shortage, initially awarded bachelor's degrees. The program's first nine graduates, who were all female and who were initially known as child care associates, began to practice in clinics and hospitals in 1972. Silver coined the term ''deprivation dwarfism'' to describe stunted child growth in spite of voracious eating. After a study of several affected children, Silver and a colleague attributed the situation to a lack of parental affection. Another growth disorder, Russell-Silver syndrome, is named in part after him. He was the co-author of a 1990 study which examined mistreatment among 431 medical students. Eighty percent of the students in the study reported incidents of mistreatment during medical school. Silver had a son, Andrew, and a wife, Harriet. Silver died of cancer in January 1991 at University Hospital in Denver.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Silver, Henry 1918 births 1991 deaths American pediatricians University of California, Berkeley alumni 20th-century American physicians Members of the National Academy of Medicine