Sarah Elizabeth Wardroper appointment as matron at St Thomas' Hospital in January 1854. Although nursing was still largely a disreputable occupation she made St Thomas' a model of reformed, professional, nursing and in 1860, with the creation of the training school for nurses by the Nightingale Fund at the same hospital, she was appointed superintendent. Florence Nightingale selected St Thomas' Hospital as the site for her new nurse training school, largely because of Wardroper's qualities (and those of the enlightened resident medical officer, R.G. Whitfield). Nightingale, Wardroper and Whitfield worked together to establish the new school, the first secular training school for nurses
UPMC Shadyside School of Nursing with Florence Nightingale three years prior. The school was the first nursing school in Western Pennsylvania. In 1942 the school was renamed to Shadyside School of Nursing, four years after the hospital changed its name to Shadyside Hospital. In December 2009, the UPMC Shadyside School of Nursing received an endowment of $900,000, the largest donation in the school's history, from 1939 alumnae Jane Pesci. The UPMC Shadyside School of Nursing offers a diploma in nursing. The school has a 18-month, full-time daylight program and 3-year, part-time evening/weekend program. The school is accredited by the National League for Nursing Accrediting Commission