Remembering Marie Manthey, a Creator of the Primary Nursing Model of Care

Marie Ellen Manthey, MSN, one of the creators of primary nursing, a system of nursing care delivery, died on Dec. 12 at her home in Minneapolis.

While serving as associate director of nursing at the University of Minnesota’s hospital, Manthey led a team of nurses that implemented the primary nursing model in the late 1960s, which prioritizes “relationship-based care” and is based on the idea that one nurse takes responsibility for a small group of patients and delivers individualized care for the entirety of their stay.

Manthey also hosted salon dinners in her home for many years, during which leading nurses spoke about ways to improve healthcare, creating a “safe space” for nurses to connect and share how they felt about the challenges of their difficult work, wrote Judy Davidson, DNP, RN, of the University of California San Diego, in a post on LinkedIn. (Davidson is a member of MedPage Today‘s editorial board.)

“I knew ABOUT Marie the entire time I have been a nurse, and like most, have her text on Primary Nursing in my bookshelf,” Davidson wrote, noting that after meeting at a conference, the two women collaborated and spoke together many times.

In 2015, the American Academy of Nursing honored Manthey with the Living Legends award. At the ceremony, she “rocked the audience with a speech disclosing her long-held sobriety, past struggles with substance use disorder, and the importance of supporting nurses through their recovery,” Davidson recalled.

“Her testimony was a very powerful tool to move the audience to understand that if the best and brightest among us, a living legacy, could be afflicted with this disease, then this could happen to anyone,” she added.

Manthey also established the Nurses Peer Support Network of Minnesota, which enabled nurses to help one another recover from substance use disorder over the past decade.

Manthey was inspired to become a nurse when she was sick and alone in the hospital at the age of 5. Her parents were allowed to visit only a few hours each week. While there, she met a nurse named Florence Marie Fisher, who colored in her coloring book, which Manthey described as “an act of extremely precious caring” in a University of Minnesota oral history project.

Carrie Kappel, RN, co-chair of the board of directors for the Nurses Peer Support Network, told MedPage Today that “the value of relationships was not lost on Marie Manthey.”

“Marie used all relationships built throughout her career to challenge the narrative in the profession of nursing, to move substance use disorder from being seen as a moral failing to a treatable, chronic, potentially fatal disease,” Kappel said.

Jayne Felgen, MPA, president emeritus and consultant at Creative Health Care Management in Bloomington, Minnesota, which was founded by Manthey, described her as a “trailblazer … always interested in social justice and practical solutions,” and the “face” of the primary nursing model.

Known as an activist, Manthey acknowledged the problem of systemic racism and the importance of allyship in nursing during a 2020 interview with the Daily Nurse. After becoming friends with a Black nurse who worked at a local hospital and joined Manthey’s dinner salons, she saw for the first time how decisions she’d made as a nursing leader impacted nurses of color.

“[U]ntil now, I didn’t really understand white privilege. Now — at the age of 85 — I finally get how being born white has affected everything from my thought processes to my life experiences. It’s very clear to me that action is the only solution,” Manthey said.

Marty Lewis-Hunstiger, RN, MA, editor-in-chief of Creative Nursing, said she first became aware of Manthey in 1973 when Lewis-Hunstiger launched a primary nursing model at the neonatal intensive care unit at the University of Minnesota.

“She has been my colleague, mentor, and friend in all the years since, as well as a model for how to be a mentor,” Lewis-Hunstiger told MedPage Today. “Watching her eyes as she would watch one of her mentees tell about their most recent accomplishment was a beautiful thing to see.”

Manthey earned a bachelor of science degree in 1962 and a master of science degree in nursing administration in 1964 from the University of Minnesota’s School of Nursing. She served as the associate director of nursing at the university’s hospital from 1964-1971. Manthey was also awarded an honorary doctorate there in 1999. In 2022, she was the recipient of an outstanding achievement award from the university.

Manthey has written six books, published more than 100 professional articles, and is an elected fellow of both the American Academy of Nursing and the Royal College of Nursing in the U.K.