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Dorothea Dix
Dorothea Dix was a social reformer for the treatment of the mentally ill. In 1841, she led a change in the United States and Europe inspecting mental institutions for mistreatment. In a period of fifteen years she did more than most people do in a lifetime. These changes are still felt today by the way mental patients are treated. She accomplished a great deal for humanity within her lifetime. -
Mary Ann Bickerdyke
Mary Ann Bickerdyke established a hospital for the Northern soldiers during the Civil War and eventually established more than 300 field hospitals to help wounded soldiers. During battles, Bickerdyke risked her life to search for wounded soldiers. -
Clara Barton
Clara Barton is known for establishing the American Red Cross. She was also placed in charge of a search for missing Civil War soldiers by Abraham Lincoln in 1865. She was known as "The Angel of the Battlefield". Her work in Andersonville is displayed in the book, Numbering All the Bones, by Ann Rinaldi. She was the leader of a nationwide campaign to identify all soldiers missing during the Civil War. She published lists of names in newspapers. -
Linda Richards
Linda Richards created a system for charting and maintaining individual medical records for patients. This was the first written reporting system for nurses. In 1874, she became superintendent of the Boston Training School. The school's nurse-training program was in danger of closing due to poor management. Richards was able to turn the program around and it soon became one of the most successful nursing programs in the country. -
Isabel Hampton Robb
In 1889, Isabel Hampton Robb was appointed head of the new Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, where she suggested reforms, taught, and published the text Nursing: Its Principles and Practice. She was also one of the founders of modern American nursing theory. Robb is best known for creating reforms that set standards for nursing programs, some of which are still used today. -
Lavinia Dock
Lavinia Dock wrote Materia Medica for Nurses in 1890, one of the first nursing text books. She also did work on History of Nurses, which is four volumes. Through her teaching and writing, she did her best to improve the health of the poor and the nursing profession. -
Mary Adelaide Nutting
Mary Adelaide Nutting is known for raising the quality of education in nursing and related fields. In 1907, she joined the Teachers College at Columbia University and became the world's first professor of nursing. -
Mary Eliza Mahoney
Mary Eliza Mahoney was the first African-American registered nurse in the United States. She became one of the first members of a mostly white Nurses Associated Alumnae of the United States and Canada in 1896. She was also a founder of the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses (NACGN) in 1908. -
Margaret Sanger
In 1914 Margaret Sanger founded the National Birth Control League. She is known for supporting birth control and women’s health. She gave up nursing to devote all her time to distributing birth control information. She wrote many articles on this issue and other health issues. -
Annie Goodrich
Annie Goodrich was the first appointed female and the founding dean at Yale University in 1923. Yale University School of Nursing is “one of the first two schools of nursing established on parity with other schools of a university.” -
Mary Breckinridge
In 1925, Mary Breckinridge formed the Committee for Mothers and Babies. This group eventually became the Frontier Nursing Service. This organization started midwifery work in places that did not have physicians. -
Hildegard Peplau
Hildegard Peplau was as an Army nurse and served in England during WWII, which started in 1939. She was assigned to the 312th Station Hospital for Military Neuropsychiatry, a 750-bed hospital and neuropsychiatric rehabilitation center. Because of this, her conviction to psychiatric nursing was greatly increased. -
Virginia Henderson
Starting in 1939, Virginia Henderson was the author of "Principles and Practices of Nursing," a widely used text, and "Basic Principles of Nursing," which has been published in 27 languages. She also received the Virginia Historical Nurse Leader Award and was a member of the American Nurses Association Hall of Fame. -
Ida V. Moffett
In 1943, Ida V. Moffett organized Alabama's first unit of the Cadet Nurse Corps, a federal program of the Public Health Service that was established to overcome a shortage of nurses, and oversaw construction of a second building for the School of Nursing. -
Lillian Holland Harvey
Under Lillian Holland Harvey’s leadership, the School of Nursing at Tuskegee was the first to offer a Bachelor of Science degree in Alabama in 1948. The Tuskegee Board of Trustees renamed the Nurses Home to “Lillian Holland Harvey Hall” in honor of Harvey. -
Martha Rodgers
Martha Rodgers specialized in public health nursing. She worked in Michigan, Connecticut, and Arizona, where she established the Visiting Nurse Service of Phoenix, Arizona. This is a service with nurses that visit patients in their homes. Between 1952 and 1975 she was a Professor and Head of the Division of Nursing at New York University. -
Madeleine Leininger
Madeleine Leininger was dean of the University of Washington, School of Nursing in 1969.
She is sometimes considered the "Margaret Mead of nursing" and is recognized worldwide as the founder of transcultural nursing, a program developed to answer the need for a global perspective in nursing in a world of interdependent nations and people. -
Dorothea Orem
Dorothea Orem created the self-care deficit theory in 1980. She explains universal self-care that is needed to take care of oneself. She uses these requisites as a basis for the nursing process. -
Lillian Wald
In 1893, Lillian Wald coined the term “public health nurse” for nurses who worked outside hospitals in poor and middle-class communities. These nurses specialized in both preventative care and the preservation of health. They responded to referrals from physicians and patients, and took fees based on the patient’s ability to pay. -
Jean Watson
Jean Watson's most recent accomplishment in 2008 is the establishment of The Watson Caring Science Institute which is a non-profit foundation to continue and expand the nature of the work of caring science. She is founder of the original Center for Human Caring in Colorado and the International Caritas Consortium, a network of systems using caring theory to transform practitioners and systems.
