Dates

• Existence: 1939 - 2023

Biography

Mary Patricia "Pat" Donahue, nurse educator and scholar, was born in 1939 in Youngstown, Ohio. Donahue received her nursing degree from St. Luke’s Hospital School of Nursing in 1960. She then earned her BSN and MSN from the Ohio State University School of Nursing, where as a faculty member for fourteen years, she worked in both clinical and teaching positions. Donahue was a professor in the College of Nursing at the University of Iowa from 1976 to 2006. She received her doctorate from the University of Iowa College of Nursing in 1981 and was promoted from assistant professor to full professor in 1993. Between 1999 and 2006, Donahue served as the Executive Associate Dean of Academic Affairs for the College of Nursing.  During that time she initiated and oversaw the professional Masters in Nursing and Healthcare Practice (MNHP) program at the University of Iowa. Donahue retired in 2006.

Donahue achieved national prominence as a nurse historian and educator. She published over one hundred articles, reviews, and books on nursing history and education, terminal illness, and the ethics and philosophy of nursing. Donahue published her best-known work, Nursing, The Finest Art: An Illustrated History, in 1985. Donahue belonged to numerous professional organizations including Sigma Xi, the American Nurses Association, the Academy of Medical-Surgical Nurses, and the Philosophy of Education Society. She held leadership positions in Sigma Theta Tau, the Iowa Nurses Association, the Johnson County Unit of the American Cancer Society, and the American Association for the History of Nursing, of which she was president from 1988 to 1990. Donahue received numerous honors including the Teresa E. Christy Award in 1985, induction as a fellow into the American Academy of Nursing in 1989, the Agnes Dillon Randolph Award in 1996, and the University of Iowa Distinguished Achievement Award in 2006.

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