Helen Varney papers

Helen Varney Burst is professor emerita of the Yale School of Nursing, Nurse-Midwifery Specialty. After attending University of Kansas (BSN, 1961) and Yale University School of Nursing (MSN, 1963) she practiced midwifery in a variety of settings and directed nurse-midwifery education programs at the University of Mississippi Medical Center and the Medical Center of South Carolina before returning the Yale School of Nursing where she was a faculty member from 1979 until retirement in 2004.

Varney Burst is the author of the first textbook for nurse-midwives in the United States. Originally titled Nurse-Midwifery, it is now in its fourth edition as Varney’s Midwifery. In addition to numerous journal articles, she is also author of Yale School of Nursing: Celebrating 90 Years of Excellence and co-author of Varney’s Pocket Midwife. She was also a co-originator of the mastery learning modular curriculum design for nurse-midwife education at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in 1972.

An outspoken advocate of midwifery as a profession, Varney Burst was a member of the American College of Nurse-Midwives (ACNM), serving two terms as president (1977-1981), as chair of several committees, and as a representative to many other national groups. She received the ACNM Hattie Hemschemeyer Award in 1982. She has given many speeches and panel presentations on both the history and the future of nurse-midwifery in the United States.

Varney Burst was also involved in the efforts to improve health care for women and children in the New Haven area. She served on the Prenatal Care Committee of the Special Commission on Infant Health in the 1980s and 1990s, working to decrease the infant mortality rates in the city.