Leah Curtin, ScD(h), RN, FAAN, is Clinical Professor of Nursing at the University of Cincinnati College of Nursing and Health and she was the Editor-in-Chief of Nursing Management for 20 years where she also helped found the Nursing Management Congress and The Journal of Wound Care Management. Curtin was included in Pivotal Moments: Leaders who Changed the Course of a Profession, volume II (2007) and also Nursing Ethics: a vision and a legacy by Winifred Pinch in 2008. Curtin also founded Metier Consultants in 1986, and she was the Director of Cross Country Education’s Nurse Manager Boot Camp from 2000 to 2008. In 2007, she was appointed to the Standards and Appeals Board of DNV Health Care – deemed in 2009 by Medicare to Accredit U.S. Hospitals. DNV offers a radically new approach to accreditation that integrates ISO and NIOSH standards with CMS’ Conditions of Participation. In 2008 to the present, she serves as the Executive Editor of American Nurse Today, the official Journal of the American Nurses’ Association.

A graduate of the Good Samaritan Hospital School of Nursing and the University of Cincinnati, Leah earned a master’s degree in health planning and health administration from the University and a Master of Arts in philosophy with a dual major in ethics and linguistic analysis from the Athenaeum of Ohio. In 1982, she was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing in recognition of the national impact of her work, and in 1990 she was awarded an honorary doctorate from the State University of New York for the impact her editorials had on the development of nursing and health care in the United States. In 2002, The Medical College of Ohio awarded her a second honorary doctorate for humanitarian services in connection with her work in war-torn Yugoslavia. In 2009, The American Academy of Nursing granted her its most distinguished honor: Curtin was declared ‘a Living Legend’ in nursing.

A consultant to CGFNS International, Curtin was scholar-in-residence at Ballarat University in Victoria, Australia. She also has served as a visiting scholar at the University of Oklahoma, Brigham Young University and the University of Eastern Kentucky. She was the first virtual faculty member of the University of Colorado School of Nursing. In 1998, Dr. Curtin was invited to Copenhagen where she testified before Denmark’s Ministry of Health on the impact restructuring in U.S. hospitals had on the safety of patient care. In 2001, and again in 2002, she was a distinguished lecturer for the Hong Kong Hospital Authority, Hong Kong, China. She has been listed in Who’s Who in America since 1991 and in Who’s Who in the World since 1992.

She is the author of more 400 articles. The most recent, Knowing You Can… is in the January 2015 edition of American Nurse Today. She is the author of 400 editorials, 40 blogs (on the American Nurse Today Website, and 8 books written for professionals – and one, Sunflowers in the Sand: children’s stories of war, written for a general audience. Researched in the Balkans, most notably Croatia and Bosnia Herzegovina, this book was endorsed by persons as diverse as the Executive Director of UNICEF, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Cleveland, and comedian Jerry Lewis. With a forward written by Tony Danza, and a positive review in The New York Times Sunday Book Review, all proceeds from the sale of Sunflowers is sent to The Croatian Children’s Fund for the care and treatment of children damaged by war.

Books

Sunflowers in the Sand: Stories from Children of War

In this fascinating look into the heart of war, Croatian children tell their stories in their own words and through their own art.

Nursing into the 21st Century (New Nursing Photobooks)

Content addresses the ethics of nursing, professional nursing issues, nursing productivity, and politics and finance. Issues include leadership during changing times, issues central to patient care, health care reform, effective restructuring, empowerment, personalized care in a standardized world, advanced licensure, and more.

Nursing ethics: Theories and pragmatics

Nursing ethics: Theories and pragmatics Paperback – 1982