Ethel Parsons’ biographical characteristics: leadership in American and Brazilian nursing

OBJECTIVE: to reconstruct Ethel Parsons’ biographical aspects in the centenary of the technical cooperation mission for nursing development in Brazil. METHOD: biographical research, carried out using the historical sources analysis method, which consists of reading and interpreting the collected documents. RESULTS: from a renowned family, Ethel Parsons was head of public health services and worked for the American Red Cross before being appointed to coordinate the Rockefeller Foundation mission in Brazil, where she inaugurated the Anglo-American model of nursing. For ten years, Parsons dedicated herself to leading such a mission, which resulted in implementation and dissemination, by decree, of the Anglo-American model of nursing. In 1931, she returned to her country, where she died in 1953. CONCLUSION: Ethel Parsons stood out in the 20th century as a woman and a nurse, leading public health care services in the USA and Brazil. Her biography demonstrates an ideal of professionalization and science to be conquered by nursing in the care and educational scenario, which influenced the design of a collective identity for Brazilian nursing.