Mrs. Mary Breckinridge, the driving force of the graduate school, founded the Frontier Nursing Service in 1925 as a demonstration project in the care of mother and child. The Frontier Graduate School of Midwifery graduated its first class in 1940. In 1970, the school was renamed the Frontier School of Midwifery and Family Nursing with the opening of the nation's first family nurse practitionereducation program. In 1989/1990, as a joint effort of the Frontier Nursing Service, Case Western Reserve University, the Maternity Center Association, and the National Association of Childbearing Centers, the Community-based Nurse-midwifery Education Program was born. Hence, Frontier became the first graduate school of nurse-midwifery to offer distance education. In 2005, the Community-Based Women's Health Care Nurse Practitioner option was added. In 2011, Frontier School of Midwifery and Family Nursing became Frontier Nursing University to underscore the distinct graduate level programs while reflecting the institution's history and vision. In that same year, FNU was ranked nationally by U.S. News & World Report as 1st among graduate schools of nurse-midwifery and 14th among family nurse practitioner programs.
Academics
Frontier Nursing University focuses exclusively on nursing education with a strong focus on training nurses to provide care in rural and underserved communities. Its academic offerings include:
The school campus is located in a wooded setting northwest of the center of Hyden, off Hickory Street. The campus includes the former Hyden Hospital, built in 1928 as the county's first medical facility, and "Aunt Hattie's Barn", built 1928-30 as a dormitory. These and other campus buildings were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991 for their role in the organization's history.
In 2019, the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Kentucky passed Senate Bill 84 to provide certification and regulation for midwives, as well as creating a new public council to implement new licensure requirements. Kentucky stopped certifying midwives in 1975, and there have been no clear regulations on the practice for more than thirty years. The advisory council is set up under the Board of , which will promulgate regulations to establish standards for training programs, licensing, transfer of care from a midwife to a hospital, disciplinary actions, and more, as well as define a list of conditions that require the collaboration, consultation or referral of a client to a physician or other appropriate healthcare provider. The law also criminalizes unlicensed midwife services, although it does provide exceptions for traditional birth attendants for religious or cultural purposes and for family members and friends providing uncompensated care. It is unclear how these statutory terms will be interpreted and enforced.
