Lillian Sholtis Brunner, Former Penn Nursing Overseer
Lillian Sholtis Brunner, HUP’40, ED’45, HON’85, a former Overseer of the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, died on March 23. She was 97 years old.
Dr. Brunner is known as the editor of the traditional surgical nursing texts, Textbook of Medical and Surgical Nursing and The Lippincott Manual of Nursing Practice. Her expertise and innovation in combining clinical practice and teaching gave young nurses access to critical practice knowledge in the rapidly growing nursing profession, access that is increased by her book’s publication in numerous languages.
She graduated from the School of Nursing at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (1940), the School of Education at Penn (1945) and Case Western Reserve University (1947). She was an operating room supervisor at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and taught at the schools of nursing at Penn, Bryn Mawr Hospital and Yale University.
A devoted supporter of Penn’s School of Nursing, Dr. Brunner was a member of its Board of Overseers from 1982 to 1988; she became an emeritus member in 1999. In 1985, she received an honorary doctorate from Penn and helped establish the Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing, serving as the chair of the Center’s Advisory Board for the next ten years. In 1994, she received the Alumni Award of Merit from the University of Pennsylvania. Her legacy also includes the Mathias J. Brunner Instructional Technology Center, which she established in honor of her late husband in 2000, and the Lillian Sholtis Brunner Chair in Medical-Surgical Nursing, established in 2001 to support Penn Nursing faculty. The Lillian Sholtis Brunner Award for Innovation is presented to a Penn Nursing graduate each year. Dr. Brunner was also a member of the Trustees’ Council of Penn Women.
Dr. Brunner was a member of the Board of Trustees of the Presbyterian Medical Center and its first vice chairman for education and research. She co-founded (with Theresa I. Lynch) the History of Nursing Project, which became the Nursing Museum at the Pennsylvania Hospital. She chaired the Advisory Nursing Committee and the History/Archives Committee at the Presbyterian Medical Center. She was named a member of the American Academy of Nursing (AAN) in 1979 and a Living Legend in 2002.
She is survived by two daughters, a son and a granddaughter. The family requests that donations in her memory be sent to the Penn School of Nursing, the Francis Payne Bolton School of Nursing at Case Western Reserve University or the American Nurses Association. |