Norma Lang, professor of nursing, is the first nurse and woman to receive the prestigious 2001 Ernest A. Codman Award. Lang earned the honor, which is presented by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, for her work in developing a scientific system for the comparison and evaluation of nursing practices and the quality of care worldwide.

A pioneer of first quality assurance efforts in the nursing profession, Lang helped develop a standardized vocabulary and classification that can be used in both electronic and paper records to describe nursing practices in various clinical settings. Adopted in numerous countries, the international classification system is commonly referred to as the Lang Model.

The Codman Award, which previously had gone only to doctors and organizations, recognizes those who make significant advances in the quality of healthcare.

A Philadelphia resident, Lang serves Penn in various ways—she is senior research fellow in the Annenberg Center for Public Policy, senior fellow in the Leonard Davis Institute for Health Economics, advisor and faculty member for the Wharton Johnson & Johnson Program in Management for Nurse Executives and head of the Penn Macy Institute to Advance Academic Nursing Practice.

More nursing kudos

-  Karen Buhler-Wilkerson should be pleased with the success of her new book, “No Place Like Home: A History of Nursing and Home Care in the United States.” It recently received the Lavinia Dock Award from the American Association for the History of Nursing.

-  Ann L. O’Sullivan is now chair of the Executive Committee of the Section on Public Healthy and Preventive Medicine at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. The committee aims to create awareness about and spur change in public policy for the betterment of community members. O’Sullivan is currently an associate professor of primary care nursing at Penn and conducts research on adolescent pregnancy and its prevention.