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Dorthea Dix
Dix was a Sunday school teacher in the East Cambridge Jail, an there she noticed the terrible conditions the mentally ill lived in. This encouraged her to open the Worcester State Hospital for the mentally ill. When the first hospital became a success, it led her to open many others later in her life. -
Mary Ann Bickerdyke
Bickerdyke was a nurse and health care provider to the Union Army during the American Civil War. She gave many speeches across the North, describing the difficult conditions that soldiers experienced. She was a very dedicated nurse and often times went searching for wounded soliders. -
Linda Richards
Richards was the first to graduate from the nursing program at the University of Zurich. Richards used her experience to establish the first nurse-training program in Japan. She continued to form nurse-training programs all over the United States. -
Clara Barton
Barton was a nurse to many wounded soliders in the Civil War. This led her to become the founder of the American Red Cross. -
Isabel Hampton Robb
Hampton became head of the John Hopkins Hospital. Hampton helped form the Women's Fund Committee, which called for the admission of women into the school of medicine. She was active in the International Council of Nurses and the Committee to Secure by Act of Congress the Employment of Graduate Women Nurses in the Hospital Service of the US Army. -
Mary Adelaide Nutting
Head nurse at John Hopkins Hospital and then later became assistant superintendent of nurses. After leaving John Hopkins, Nutting became head of the Teachers College. She was eventually named honorary president of the Florence Nightingale International Foundation. -
Lillian Wald
Wald's work was the founder of the Henry Street Settlement and the Visiting Nurse Service. Wald became an influential leader in city, state, and national politics. She wanted peace for the poor. -
Lavinia Dock
Dock was a part of the Nurses' Settlement in New York City. Working closely with Lillian Wald, she strove not only to improve the health of the poor but also to improve the profession of nursing through her teaching, -
Mary Eliza Mahoney
Mahoney was the first African-American registered nurse in the U.S.A. She became one of the original members of what is now called the American Nurses Association. Mahoney was also a cofounder of the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses, and after her death an award was created in her memory. -
Martha Sanger
Sanger was aware of the effects of unplanned pregnancies, and this led her to invent birth control. The Comstock Act of 1873 banned birth control distribution. But, Sanger did not give up and ended up setting up the first birth control clinic in the United States. -
Virginia Henderson
Henderson was the first full-time nursing instructor in Virginia. She came up with one of the most widely used definitions of nursing. Henderson was a part of the American Academy of Nursing and a member of the American Nurses Association Hall of Fame. -
Annie Goodrich
Goodrich was an ANA Hall of Fame Inductee. She served as president of the American Nurses Association. Eventually she became the dean of the first nursing school at Yale University. -
Mary Breckinridge
Breckinridge established the Frontier Nursing Service (FNS) to help provide professional health care in the Appalachian Mountains which was one of America's poorest regions. FNS staff started the American Association of Nurse-Midwives, which lasted longer than any other nurse-midwifery in the country. -
Lillian Holland Harvey
Harvey was the Director of a Nursing Service at John A. Andrew Hospital and was the Dean of the school of Nursing at the Tuskegee Institute. She was also the first recipient of the "ASNA Lillian Hollard Harvey Award." -
Martha Rogers
Rogers established and eventually became the Executive Director of the first Visiting Nurse Service in Phoenix, AZ. Rogers was appointed Head of the Division of Nursing at New York University. She later edited a journal called Nursing Science, which led to publications of many different books. -
Ida V. Moffett
Moffett help create the first four-year nursing school in Alabama. The Ida V. Moffett School of Nursing at Samford University stands as a lasting symbol of her dedication to the field. Her dedication and hardwork led to her induction into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame. -
Hildegard Peplau
Peplau was a nursing theorist in the field of modern psychiatric nursing. She was also the president of the American Nurses Association. -
Dorothea Orem
Dorothea was a nursing theorist. She came up with the Self-care theory, which stated that nurses have to provide care when the patient cannot care for themselves. -
Madeleine Leininger
Leininger was a nursing theorist that came up with the idea of transcultural nursing. The led her to become the founder of the worldwide Transcultural Nursing movement. She wanted cultural factors to be associated with nursing. -
Jean Watson
Watson is the founder of the original Center for Human Caring and the International Caritas Consortium, a network of systems using caring theory to transform practitioners and systems. She is also a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing.
