Who is Luther Christman, RN, PhD, FAAN?

[Pia L.]

Luther Christman, RN, PhD, FAAN...nurse leader.

" Knowledge is power and professional practice means a lifetime commitment to learning"

Dr. Christman is lovingly known as one of the most controversial leaders in nursing education because of an inability to keep his viewpoints to himself (Houser &Player, 2004). Identified by a predominantly female profession as being controversial for self expression on the power of knowledge, I find his leadership example to be equally commanding. I feel this way because he endured many hostile attitudes in the pursuit of a career that many now understand requires intelligence and vocalness. Inadvertently, he was able to achieve a leadership spotlight from not giving into the psychological socialization of superiority by combating it with persistence, knowledge, and professional development. Although he experienced numerous hardships, his work on the unification model as both the dean and director of nursing at Vanderbilt Medical Center with the assistance of psychiatrist Dr. Ewald W. Busse (Duke University) clearly demonstrates that leaders can achieve success despite historically harsh attitudes toward intelligence and gender.

According to Grossman and Valiga, most of what is known about leadership by nurses is rooted largely in a masculine framework (2009). If one should examine this leader's nursing career, let it begin by developing an understanding of the manner in which women assumed him to be too intelligent and too respected to become a nurse. As a diploma educated nurse trained at Pennsylvania Hospital School of Nursing, he encountered trouble succeeding in educational endeavors when he stepped away from his job as a postal clerk and sought not to practice but to obtain more education (Houser & Player, 2004). Applying to the University of Pennsylvania, he was told that he was over qualified for nursing (Houser & Player, 2004).Ultimately, Dr. Christman was asked why he would want to waste his credentials on nursing shortly before he became a baccalaureate student at Temple University in 1937 and started what was to become a very passionate nursing career (Houser & Player, 2004). Possessing a Master's degree in psychology and being enrolled as a student at Michigan State University in 1962, Dr. Christman's source of power was solidified by obtaining a double major doctorate degree in anthropology and sociology. As a result of this, he developed the laws of behavior which became the foundation for his vision for nursing. By studying sciences that explained positive and negative human phenomena, he was able to gain support as a follower of nursing through legitimate and expert power. He was also able to create what is now known as the advance practice nursing model.

References:

Grossman, S. & Valiga, T. (2009). The new leadership challenge: creating the future of nursing (3rd ed.).Philadelphia, PA: F.A. Davis Company

Houser, B. & Player, K. (2004). Pivotal moments in nursing. Indianapolis, IN: Sigma Theta Tau International