Uploaded March 2026 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
When Cynda Rushton, PhD, RN, FAAN, started her nursing career in a pediatric intensive care unit, she found herself in what she now calls moral distress. A young patient had been admitted with a serious injury that had cut off oxygen to the brain, leading to severe neurological damage. The patient’s parents wanted to limit life-sustaining therapies and let their child die naturally, but the clinicians in charge opted for more aggressive treatment.
Situations like these motivated Rushton to continue her education in the field of bioethics. In 1991, she joined the Johns Hopkins Children's Center as a clinical nurse specialist in ethics, and she became the chair of the Johns Hopkins Hospital ethics committee in 1999.
Rushton isn’t the first nurse at Hopkins to advance the field of bioethics. Isabel Hampton Robb served as the first superintendent of the nurses at Johns Hopkins Hospital and the principal of its training school for nurses from 1889 to 1894. In 1900, she wrote Nursing Ethics, the first textbook in the United States to cover the qualities that should make up a nurse’s moral formation
To learn more, visit https://giving.jhu.edu/story/cynda-rushton-nursing-ethics/.
When Cynda Rushton, PhD, RN, FAAN, started her nursing career in a pediatric intensive care unit, she found herself in what she now calls moral distress. A young patient had been admitted with a serious injury that had cut off oxygen to the brain, leading to severe neurological damage. The patient’s parents wanted to limit life-sustaining therapies and let their child die naturally, but the clinicians in charge opted for more aggressive treatment.
Situations like these motivated Rushton to continue her education in the field of bioethics. In 1991, she joined the Johns Hopkins Children's Center as a clinical nurse specialist in ethics, and she became the chair of the Johns Hopkins Hospital ethics committee in 1999.
Rushton isn’t the first nurse at Hopkins to advance the field of bioethics. Isabel Hampton Robb served as the first superintendent of the nurses at Johns Hopkins Hospital and the principal of its training school for nurses from 1889 to 1894. In 1900, she wrote Nursing Ethics, the first textbook in the United States to cover the qualities that should make up a nurse’s moral formation
To learn more, visit https://giving.jhu.edu/story/cynda-rushton-nursing-ethics/.
