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Dorothea Dix
Dorothea Dix has been described as "the most effective advocate of humanitarian reform in American mental institutions during the nineteenth century". Dix became the Union's Superintendent of Female Nurses during the Civil War. -
Linda Richards
The first professionally trained American nurse, Linda Richards is credited with establishing nurse training programs in various parts of the United States and in Japan. She also is recognized for creating the first system for keeping individual medical records for hospitalized patients. -
Mary Ann Bickerdyke
She was known as Mother Bickerdyke and was a hospital administrator for Union soldiers during the American Civil War 1861. -
Clara Barton
Clara Barton became a teacher in Massachusetts at the age of seventeen. Barton was the President of the American National Red Cross for twenty-two years. Barton herself was the most decorated American woman, receiving the Iron Cross, the Cross of Imperial Russia and the International Red Cross Medal. Her final act was founding the National First Aid Society in 1904. -
Mary Eliza Mahoney
In 1879, America's first black professional nurse, Mary Eliza Mahoney is known not only for her outstanding personal career, but also for her exemplary contributions to local and national professional organizations. In 1909, Mahoney gave the welcome address at the first conference of the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses (NACGN). Today, the Mary Mahoney Award is bestowed biennially in recognition of significant contributions in interracial relationships. -
Isabel Hampton Robb
The American Nurses Association's first president and one of the founders of modern American nursing theory was Isabel Adams Hampton Robb, her most notable contributions to the system of nursing education was the implementation of a grading policy for nursing students. -
Lavinia Dock
She compiled the first, and long most important, manual of drugs for nurses, Materia Medica for Nurses 1890. She was jailed briefly three times for taking part in militant suffrage demonstrations. -
Lillian Wald
She was the originator of public-health nursing and the founder of the Visiting Nurse Service, also initiated the first public-school nursing program in the United States and founded the Henry Street Settlement in New York City. During her lifetime she received the Gold Medal of the National Institute of Social Sciences (1912), the Rotary Club Medal, and the Better Times Medal. -
Margaret Sanger
Today, organizations and individuals which oppose abortion and, sometimes, birth control, have charged Sanger with eugenicism and racism. Sanger supporters consider the charges exaggerated or false. -
Annie Goodrich
Goodrich established the United States Student Nurse Reserve, more commonly known as the Army School of Nursing, in 1918-1919. In 1923, she became 1st Dean of the new Yale University School of Nursing begun with money from Rockefeller Foundation. -
Virginia Henderson
A modern legend in nursing, Virginia A. Henderson has earned the title "foremost nurse of the 20th century." She holds twelve honorary doctoral degrees and has received the International Council of Nursing's Christianne Reimann Prize, which is considered nursing's most prestigious award. A recipient of many awards, the Sigma Theta Tau International Library is named in Henderson's honor 1966. -
Mary Breckinridge
She joined the American Committee for Devastated France following the end of World War I. Breckinridge returned to England to study midwifery since no course was offered in the United States. She secured the necessary training at the British Hospital for Mothers and Babies and obtaine her certificate from the Central Midwives Board 1925. -
Ida V. Moffett
Always dressed in her traditional white uniform, including her cap and her 1926 School of Nursing class pin, she was a lifelong champion of compassionate care. The Ida V. Moffett School of Nursing at Samford University stands as a lasting symbol of her dedication to the field. Vines returned to Birmingham in June 1928 and worked as an operating-room supervisor for Birmingham Baptist Hospital. -
Mary Adelaide Nutting
Her influential role in raising the quality of higher education in nursing. In 1934 she was named honorary president of the Florence Nightingale International Foundation, and in 1944 the National League for Nursing Education created the Mary Adelaide Nutting Medal in her honors and awarded the first one to her. -
Lillian Holland Harvey
Dr. Lillian Harvey was Dean of the Tuskegee (Institute) University School of Nursing for almost three decades. She weathered the difficult times of racial discrimination and segregation during the 1940's. Among her many honors were the Award for Distinguished Achievement in Nursing and the American Nurses' Association Mary Mahoney Award. The Alabama State Nurses' Association established the annual Lillian Holland Harvey Award in her honor. -
Hildegard Peplau
During World War II Hildegard Peplau was a member of the Army Nurse Corps and worked in a neuropsychiatric hospital in London, England. Peplau describes four phases of nurse-patient relationship ORIENTATION, IDENTIFICATION, EXPLOITATION, and RESOLUTION. Hildegard Peplau holds numerous awards and positions. -
Martha Rogers
Rogers was appointed Head of the Division of Nursing at New York University in 1954. In about 1963 Martha edited a journal called Nursing Science. -
Dorothea Orem
Dorothea Elizabeth Orem was a nursing theorist and founder of the Orem model of nursing, or Self Care Deficit Nursing Theory. -
Madeleine Leininger
She is considered by some to be the "Margaret Mead of nursing" and is recognized worldwide as the founder of trans-cultural nursing, a program that she created at the School in 1974. -
Jean Watson
She is founder of the original Center for Human Caring in Colorado and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing. Jean Watson is well known for her Theory of Human/Transpersonal Caring.
