Louie Croft Boyd

Louie Croft Boyd (1871 – June 15, 1951) was an American nurse, hospital superintendent of nurses, nursing instructor, and writer. As a lobbyist for the newly formed Colorado State Trained Nurses Association, she advocated for legislation to regulate the licensing of nurses in Colorado. Upon passage of the bill in 1905, she applied for and became the first licensed nurse in the state. She was posthumously inducted into the Colorado Nurses Association Hall of Fame and the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame in 2004.

Early life and education Louie Croft Boyd was born in New York in 1871. As a teenager, Boyd was active in the cause of women's suffrage and wrote for a newspaper. In 1892 she relocated to Colorado for health reasons, and during her convalescence became interested in nursing. She enrolled at the newly opened Colorado Training School for Nurses at Denver General Hospital, where she earned her B.A. in 1899.

She did postgraduate work at Chicago Presbyterian Hospital in 1904, and became a registered nurse in Colorado in 1905 and in Minnesota in 1909. She was also an alumnus of the University of Colorado Denver, the University of Denver, and the University of New Mexico.

In 1910 she began training nurses at Park Avenue Hospital, City and County Hospital, and Children's Hospital of Denver.

Memberships In 1904 Boyd participated in the establishment of the Colorado State Trained Nurses Association (today the Colorado Nurses Association). Boyd's 1911 work State Registration for Nurses (updated in 1915) summarizes the laws applying to nurse registration throughout the United States and notes the differences in regulatory rules among states.

Boyd served as the first secretary of the State Board of Nursing Examiners from 1905 to 1907, and later served as its president. and the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame.

Selected bibliography (with W. Finley Thompson)

(2nd edition pub. 1915)