-
Dorothea Dix
She complied reports that were submitted to the January 1847 legislative session, which promptly adopted legislation establishing Illinois first state mental hospital. In 1848, Dorothea Dix visited North Carolina and called for reform in the care of mentally ill patients. In 1849, when the North Carolina State Medical Society was formed, the construction of an institution in the capital, Raleigh, for the care of mentally ill patients was authorized. -
Clara Barton
In 1861, after the Baltimore Riots, she organized a relief program for the soldiers. She was later allowed to travel with the army ambulances "for the purpose of distributing comforts for the sick and wounded, and nursing them." By the end of the war Barton had preformed works that would later be associated with the American Red Cross, officially established in 1881. -
Mary Ann Bickerdyke
Mary Ann Bickerdyke known as Mother Bickerdyke, was a hospital administrator for Union soldiers during the American Civil War in 1861. She worked on the first hospital boat. During the war, and became chief of nursing under the command of General Ulysses S. Grant, and served at the Battle of Vicksburg. -
Linda Richards
In 1872, Linda Richards became the first student to enroll in the inaugural class of five nurses in the first American Nurse’s training school. This pioneering school was run by Dr. Susan Dimock, at the New England Hospital for Women and Children in Boston. -
Mary Eliza Mahoney
Mary Eliza Mahoney was the first African-American registered nurse in the U.S.A. In 1878, at the age of thirty-three, she was admitted as a student into the hospital's nursing program. Sixteen months later, she was one of four who completed the rigorous course (of forty-two who started with her). -
Isabel Hampton Robb
Isabel Adams Hampton Robb was one of the founders of modern American nursing theory and one of the most important leaders in the history of nursing. In 1889 she was appointed head of the new Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, where she continued to suggest reforms, participated in teaching, and published the text Nursing: Its Principles and Practice. -
Lavinia Dock
After serving as a visiting nurse among the poor, she compiled the first, and long most important, manual of drugs for nurses, Materia Medica for Nurses in 1890. Dock was never one to avoid unpopular positions, she spoke out against World War 1 and was an early advocate of birth control. -
Mary Adelaide Nutting
In 1901 she was the first to develop a sound, carefully planned six-month preliminary program for nursing students. Her own scholarly approach to problems gave her a special interest in creating a library, including material on the history of nursing. -
Lillian Wald
Lillian Wald was a public health advocate, nurse, and social worker. Wald was a firm believer in pacifism, she helped lead the first women’s peace march in 1914. In addition to public health, Lillian D. Wald worked on behalf of women’s rights and the welfare of children. To help women in the workforce, she helped establish the Women’s Trade Union League in 1903. -
Annie Goodrich
In 1918 Annie Goodrich’s original plan for the Army school of nursing was brought to life as a war measure, with Goodrich as dean. Soon there after, she became the first Dean and Professor at Yale University School of Nursing from 1923-1934. -
Margaret Sanger
Margaret Higgins Sanger Slee was an American birth control activist and the founder of the American Birth Control League (ABCL) in 1921. Although she was initially met with opposition, Sanger gradually won some support for getting women access to contraception. In her drive to promote contraception and negative eugenics, Sanger remains a controversial figure. -
Mary Breckinridge
Established the Frontier Nursing Service (FNS) in 1925 to provide professional health care in the Appalachian Mountains of eastern Kentucky, one of America's poorest and most isolated regions. FNS, which has served as a model of rural health care delivery for the United States and the rest of the world, included a decentralized system of nurse-midwives visiting clients at their homes, district nursing centers, and a hospital serving an area of 700 square miles. -
Ida V. Moffett
In September 1941 she became director of nursing for both Birmingham Baptist and Highland Avenue Baptist hospitals and their joint nursing school. In 1943 she 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. -
Lillian Holland Harvey
Director of Nursing Service at John A. Andrew Hospital from 1944 to 1948, Dean of the school of Nursing, Tuskegee Institute University from 1948 until 1973. In 1948 the first baccalaureate of nursing program in the state of Alabama, was started under her leadership. This is a testimonial to the courage and foresight of this nursing leader. -
Hildegard Peplau
Hildegard Peplauwas was a nursing theorist whose seminal work Interpersonal Relations in Nursing was published in 1952. At the time, her research and emphasis on the give-and-take of nurse-client relationships was seen by many as revolutionary. Peplau went on to form an interpersonal model emphasizing the need for a partnership between nurse and client as opposed to the client passively receiving treatment (and the nurse passively acting out doctor's orders). -
Martha Rogers
Martha Elizabeth Rogers was an American nurse, researcher, theorist, and author. Rogers was appointed Head of the Division of Nursing at New York University in 1954. In about 1963 she edited a journal called Nursing Science. It was during that time that Rogers was beginning to formulate ideas about the publication of her third book An Introduction to the Theoretical Basis of Nursing. -
Dorothea Orem
Dorothea Elizabeth Orem was a nursing theorist and founder of the Orem model of nursing, or Self Care Deficit Nursing Theory which was first published in 1959. In simplest terms, this theory states that nurses have to supply care when the patients cannot provide care to themselves. -
Virginia Henderson
Henderson's book, Nature of Nursing, published in 1966 expressed her belief about the essence of nursing and influenced the hearts and minds of those who read it. She is most famous for her definition of nursing: "The unique function of the nurse is to assist the individual, sick or well, in the performance of those activities contributing to health or its recovery (or to peaceful death) that he would perform unaided if he had the necessary strength, will or knowledge" -
Madeleine Leininger
Madeline Leininger was a pioneer nurse anthropologist. Appointed dean of the University of Washington, School of Nursing in 1969. Soon followed a trip to New Guinea in the that opened her eyes to the need for nurses to understand their patients’ culture and background in order to provide care. She is considered by some to be the "Margaret Mead of nursing" and is recognized worldwide as the founder of transcultural nursing, a program that she created at the School in 1974. -
Jean Watson
Dr. Jean Watson is Distinguished Professor of Nursing and holds an endowed Chair in Caring Science at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. Her research has been in the area of human caring and loss. The foundation of Jean Watson’s theory of nursing was published in 1979 in nursing: “The philosophy and science of caring.”
