Clara Josephine McLeod
Clara Josephine McLeod
1883-1948
Johns Hopkins Hospital School of Nursing
Baltimore, Maryland, 1911
- Educator, administrator and strong proponent of improved standards for nursing education and practice.
- Leader in the Graduate Nurses Association of Virginia and the Virginia League for Nursing Education (later the Virginia Nurses Association and the Virginia League of Nursing, respectively.)
- Secretary-Treasurer of the Virginia State Board of Examiners of Nurses (later the Virginia Board of Nursing) for eleven years.
Josephine McLeod, a lifelong educator and nursing administrator, was the second of three outstanding women who served as Secretary-Treasurer of the Virginia State Board of Examiners of Nurses for a total of fifty years. Following in the steps of Ethel Smith, McLeod shaped the practice of nursing in the Commonwealth in the period surrounding World War II and further refined the leadership role of the Secretary-Treasurer position for her successor Mabel Montgomery to uphold. During her tenure as Superintendent of Nurses at the University of Virginia Hospital she both elevated the educational standards and revitalized the practice of nursing.
"October 4, 1948, does not merely record the passing of a woman who labored long and faithfully to uphold the traditions of her profession: it marks instead surcease of activities for one who had a vision, and the courage to follow it; a faith and steadfastness to make it practical; a love of people and events and the sympathy to appraise them. Miss McLeod's life purpose was based on the assumption that responsibilities are ours to fulfill, privileges are ours to pass on."
Mabel E. Montgomery, RN
Bits of News 1948
