42nd Annual Nursing and Healthcare History Conference
Wilmington, NC
October 16-18, 2025

Join Us In Wilmington Video!

Eleanor Herrmann Keynote Speaker

“A Wide Field is Open Before Her, and Many of Her Sisters”: Discovering Early African American Women Physicians.

On March 1, 1864, Rebecca Lee Crumpler, a former nurse, received her medical degree from the New England Female Medical College, becoming the first African American woman physician. At her commencement one speaker commented, “A wide field is open before her, and many of her sisters.” Over 160 years after Crumpler’ trailblazing achievement, the history of African American women physicians is an under-researched area of scholarship. For many years, I have been on a professional and personal quest to excavate the stories of these women and add them to the historical record. In this lecture, I will analyze the lives and careers of African American women physicians who practiced in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I will examine how in the face of race and sex discrimination these “sisters of a darker race” crafted careers that combined medicine, racial justice, and activism and made plain that medicine was Black women’s work. In this lecture I will weave history with my own narrative as an African American woman physician.

Preconference

Thursday, October 16, 2025
1:00pm to 4:00pm 

Title:

• Trauma-informed Pedagogical Approaches: Enhancing Empathy and Safety When Teaching History to Prepare Students for Contemporary Nursing Practice

Presenters:

• April Matthias PhD, RN, CNE
• Anka Roberto DNP, MPH, APRN, PMHNP-BC, FNAP
• Kassie Stoffer MSN, FNP-C

Brief description:

In response to the 2021 AACN Essentials, many nurse educators are incorporating nursing and healthcare history into nursing education curricula. Although the inclusion of history has the power to significantly enrich learners’ educational experience to prepare them for contemporary nursing practice, history has the potential to elicit a trauma response in learners. This workshop will provide participants with trauma-informed pedagogical approaches that foster safety and empathy in the learning environment for both learners and educators. Participants will actively engage in tabletop simulations where they will apply trauma-informed pedagogical approaches in teaching nursing and healthcare history content. Participants will receive full access to session materials which include history artifacts and a trauma-informed pedagogy rubric to guide future teaching.

Learning Objectives:

By the end of the preconference, the preconference participants will be able to:

1. Describe the AAHN history framework that outlines the power of history to enrich the educational preparation of learners for contemporary nursing practice.
2. Discuss how trauma-informed pedagogy enhances empathy and safety for learners and educators.
3. Apply trauma-informed pedagogical approaches in teaching nursing and healthcare history content.

Support AAHN by Staying at the Conference Hotel!

We kindly encourage all attendees to book their stay at the Aloft, the official hotel for the AAHN Conference in Wilmington, NC, from October 16–18, 2025. Staying at the conference hotel not only enhances your experience with convenient access to all sessions and networking opportunities, but it also helps AAHN meet its contracted room block commitment. Meeting this commitment is crucial to avoid additional fees that could impact future conferences.

Thank you for supporting AAHN by choosing to stay at the Aloft. Your participation makes a difference!