For almost 40 years, Suzan Ulrich, DrPH, MSN, CNM, FACNM, has worked as a nurse-midwife involved in both practice and education. This year, she’s bringing her passion for bettering the maternity care system to the GW School of Nursing as its next director of nurse-midwifery education.
Ulrich always knew she wanted to be a nurse and believes that watching Dr. Kildare and reading Cherry Ames were key influences on her decision to pursue a career in nursing. She states, “I was inspired to become a midwife to empower families. The maternity care system does not give families the choices they should have for childbearing. Midwifery puts the family at the center of decision making in partnership with the midwife.” Just this May, Ulrich’s editorial about birth centers being an answer to the broken maternity care system in the U.S. was published in the American Journal of Public Health.
When discussing her decision to join GW Nursing, she said, “GW’s graduate nursing programs have accomplished a great deal in ten years, so I was attracted by the dynamic excellence of the School of Nursing”. During her time at GW, she is committed to combatting rising maternal mortality rates and remains focused on generating solutions to the said crisis. She hopes to leverage the opportunity that online education provides in allowing more nurses to pursue graduate education. Additionally, she remains dedicated to educating more nurse-midwives of color here at GW.
Most recently, Ulrich taught graduate students online in the D.N.P. program at Oak Point University in Chicago. She previously served as director of the North Shore Birth Center in Beverly, Massachusetts for 10 years and as the associate dean for midwifery and women’s health at Frontier Nursing University for 10 years.