Dorrie Fontaine, Dean, UVA School of Nursing
On Tuesday, March 29, 2016, over 100 Women United members and guests gathered at the Omni hotel for Dorrie Fontaine’s exceptional presentation on mindfulness. Dorrie Fontaine, RN, PhD, FAAN, is the dean and Sadie Health Cabaniss professor at the University of Virginia (UVA) School of Nursing and Associate Chief Nursing Officer at the UVA Medical Center.
Founder of UVA’s Compassionate Care Initiative, Dorrie has more than 40 years’ experience as a critical care and trauma nurse and a distinguished record of leadership at the nation’s top nursing schools including University of Maryland, Georgetown University, and the University of California, San Francisco. She is a tireless champion of healthy work environments, training nurses and physicians together and creating resilient nurses and healthcare leaders through compassionate care.
Dorrie believes that nurturing resilience, teaching compassion, and augmenting wisdom through mindful leadership will truly transform cultures in clinical and academic settings.
Dorrie is a past-president of the American Association of Critical Care Nurses and current president of the Virginia Association of Colleges of Nursing. She earned a BSN from Villanova, an MS from the University of Maryland, and a PhD from the Catholic University of America. Inducted as a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing in 1995, she received the Presidential Citation from the Society of Critical Care Medicine and Villanova honored her with a Medallion for Contributions to the Profession. In 2012, she received the Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Maryland. She received the Martin Luther King award for championing diversity and inclusion at the Health System at the University of Virginia in 2015.