Her father, James Geddes Stahlman, was a Tennessee newspaper publisher and was a trustee of Vanderbilt University.
She then served as Assistant Resident at the Pediatric Service of the Vanderbilt University Medical Center from 1948 to 1948, and later as a cardiac resident at La Rabida Sanitarium and Exchange Fellow at Royal Caroline Institute in Stockholm, Sweden.
[3] Stahlman started the first newborn intensive care unit in the world, in order to use respiratory therapy for infants with damaged lungs.
[4] In addition, she researched methods to prevent and treat disease, developed overseas fellowship exchange programs, and initiated the Angel Transport mobile intensive-care unit for newborns.
Her publications include several papers on ethical and moral issues concerning extreme low birth rate infants.