Biographical Information

Rose Pinneo (1920-2008), R.N., M.S., was an associate professor of nursing at the University of Rochester, New York, with special expertise in cardiovascular nursing. She obtained a B.A. degree in biology, cum laude, from Maryville College, Maryville, Tennessee, in 1943, and a diploma in nursing from Johns Hopkins Hospital School of Nursing in 1946. After serving for two years as head nurse of a specialized surgical unit at Hopkins, she moved to the Philadelphia area, where she worked for almost two decades before taking the professorship at Rochester. Pinneo's career in academic nursing began at the West Jersey Hospital School of Nursing in 1950, as instructor and assistant educational director. After ten years at this post in Camden, New Jersey, Pinneo transferred to the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, where in addition to her responsibilities as an instructor of medical-surgical nursing, she earned a Master's of Science degree in education, with a nursing major.

It was at the University of Pennsylvania that Pinneo undertook the ground-breaking work highlighted in this collection of her papers. In 1963, she joined cardiologist Dr. Lawrence Meltzer as associate director of the newly formed Coronary Care Unit (CCU) at the Presbyterian-U.Penn. Hospital. The Penn CCU was among the first established in the nation, and occupied the vanguard of a new method of nursing care, organized collaboratively with senior physicians and house staff. Specialized nurses worked autonomously to monitor, diagnose, and treat ventricular arrhythmias in patients suffering from myocardial infarctions. In her position as director of nursing and co-director of research for the CCU, Pinneo trained these specialty nurses, and undertook with Meltzer a multi-year study of all aspects of CCU operations, including analysis of the increased responsibilities of nursing staff. The results indicated both a reduction in patient mortality and definitive success in the expansion and professionalization of nursing practice, relative to the traditional – and limited -- conception of nursing roles until that time. Pinneo co-authored Intensive Coronary Care: a Manual for Nurses with Meltzer and another physician colleague in 1965, reprinted for nearly twenty years. She continued to speak and publish extensively on coronary care nursing until her retirement in 1985.