Mary Lou Sole, dean of UCF’s College of Nursing, is among five healthcare professionals worldwide — and only two nursing professionals — to receive the Master of Critical Care Medicine designation from the Society of Critical Care Medicine. The honorees were recognized in a ceremony during the 2025 Critical Care Congress held in Orlando on Monday.
The Society of Critical Care Medicine is the largest nonprofit medical organization dedicated to promoting excellence and consistency in the practice of critical care with members in more than 80 countries representing all professional components of the critical care team.
The Society’s Master of Critical Care Medicine designation is awarded to individuals who have achieved global prominence in the field of critical care through exemplary leadership, eminence in clinical practice, and outstanding contributions to research and education. The designation is awarded to long-standing fellows of the American College of Critical Care Medicine. Sole was inducted as a fellow in 2009.
“Dr. Sole’s contributions to the field are nothing short of extraordinary,” says John Whitcomb, chief academic nursing officer at Clemson University School of Nursing, in his nomination letter. “Her unparalleled leadership, clinical excellence, and commitment to education and research have set a benchmark in critical care medicine and nursing that few can match.”
Sole began her nursing career nearly five decades ago in critical care, and that bedside experience inspired her research as she advanced her career. Today Sole is an internationally renowned critical care researcher with more than $4 million in research grant funding and 110 peer-reviewed publications. Her scholarly activities, which have focused on preventing complications for critically ill patients on a ventilator, have influenced the standard of care in the U.S. and around the world.
As a nurse educator for more than 40 years — with 34 at UCF — she has made significant contributions to critical care nursing education and has inspired and mentored countless future critical care nurses. She was the lead editor of the textbook, Introduction to Critical Care Nursing, which was selected as book of the year twice by the American Journal of Nursing. The textbook is now in its ninth edition and has been renamed to Sole’s Introduction to Critical Care Nursing.
At UCF, she has advised more than 80 doctoral, graduate and undergraduate student research projects most of which have focused on acute and critical care nursing. One of the most recent students was Kimberly Emery Rathbun ’17BSN ’22PhD, UCF College of Nursing’s first B.S.N. to Ph.D. graduate.
An active member of the critical care community, Sole has served on three editorial boards, expert panels of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Quality Forum task forces and chaired a study section of the NIH Center for Scientific Review.
In Central Florida, Sole held various roles at Orlando Health for more than three decades, including clinical nurse specialist and nurse scientist. Currently, she serves as the Orlando Health Endowed Chair in Nursing at UCF’s College of Nursing.
Throughout her career, Sole has been honored for her commitment to excellence in nursing education, research and practice including Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing, Sigma International Nurse Researcher Hall of Fame, and UCF Pegasus Professor. Sole has been at UCF since 1991 and led the College of Nursing for the last decade as dean. Last fall, she announced her retirement effective Summer 2025.
