Marianne Baernholdt returned to the University of Virginia’s School of Nursing to take the dean’s reins on Aug. 1, but has been a leader from her earliest nursing days.
As a 19-year-old student in her native Copenhagen, Denmark, she was tapped as a leader for the first time, she told the school in her first address. “Dannerhuset,” built as a women’s shelter in the late 1800s by the Countess Danner, was threatened with demolition by the late 1970s. Baernholdt was one of a handful of leaders who guided a group of about 300 women who saved the shelter through activism and fundraising. Thanks to their efforts, Dannerhuset remains in operation today, more than 40 years later, and a symbol of Danish feminism.
Baernholdt – a nurse scientist for 20 years, an educator and mentor for 30, and a nurse for nearly 40 – sat down with UVA Today to talk about everything from nurse burnout to health care equity to the national nursing faculty shortage.