Year Honored: 1995
Birth: 1943 -
Biography
Ruth Oates-Graham “helped to ensure that quality pre-hospital emergency care was available in Delaware.” She received a nursing degree from Wilmington General Hospital School of Nursing and continued her education through Public Health Nursing courses at Millersville State College, as well as a bachelor’s degree from Wilmington College in 1980.
Oates-Graham became a curriculum coordinator for the Nursing School of Wilmington, and “distinguished herself by the impact she made on the future nursing practices of her students.” She then went on to become the Director of Delaware’s Advanced Emergency Medical Technician School at the Medical Center of Delaware, receiving national recognition for heading one of the best pre-hospital life support programs in the country.
As the director of the Office of Paramedic Administration, Oates-Graham was responsible for the implementation of a comprehensive and advanced life-support system to provide pre-hospital medical care. She was one of the few women, and only Black woman to hold such a position in the U.S in the 1990s.
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Sources and Additional Readings
Delaware Commission for Women. (2006). Twenty-Fifth Anniversary: Hall of Fame of Delaware Women: The Legacy Endures.
