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Dorothea Dix
Dorothea Dix was an activIst for the insane. Her works started in 1841, when she began visiting jails and almshouses to study the mistreatment of the insane poor. She worked very hard to do everything in power to improve the way mental patients were treated. Although her requests for better conditions for the mentally ill were denied in America, her works in Japan eventually lead to the establishment of 2 insane asylums. During the Civil War Dix also served as superintendant of women nurses. -
Mary Ann Bickerdyke
The works of Mary Ann Bickerdyke began in 1861, she organized a group of a few ladys who worked during the Civil War to help wounded soldiers. She eventually began working alongside doctors in the field hospitals. After the war she was hired by the US Sanitary Commission, where she provided medical and support services during the war. -
Linda Richards
Linda Richards was the first graduate from the New England Hospital for Women and Children's nursing program in 1873. That made her the first America's first trained nurse. In 1874 she was named superintendant of Boston's training school, which eventually became known as the best nursing programs in the country. Richards also created the first system for charting an individual patient's medical record. -
Clara Barton
Clara Barton organized a relief program in Washington, D.C. for soldiers arriving in the city after the Baltimore riots in 1861. From then on she provided care for wounded soldiers in the American Civil War; this earned her the nickname "Angel of the Battlefield." Clara became superintendent of union nurses in 1864.In 1865, she was appointed the leader of a search for missing Civil War soldiers by Abraham Lincoln. In 1881 she established the American Red Cross . -
Isabel Hampton Robb
Isabel Robb was appointed superintendent of nurses of the Illinois Training School for Nurses at Cook County Hospital in 1883. She made important changes in the way nursing way taught while she was there, she established the first grading policy in nursing school. In 1889, she moved to James Hopkins Hospital
to become the head of the nursing school. In 1894 Isabel' text, Nursing: Its Principles and Practice, was published. -
Lavinia Dock
Lavinia Dock wrote, Meteria Medica for Nurses, the first and most important drug manual for nurses in 1890. She joined the Nurses' Settlement in New York City in 1896, where she strove to improve health not only health of the poor, but also the profession of nursing through her writings. She was an editor to the American journal of Nursing and did the most creditable work for A Hisotry of Nursing. -
Lillian Wald
Lillian Wald started as a visiting nurse in 1893. Her goal was to ensure that women and children, immigrants and the poor, and members of all ethnic and religious groups would realize America’s promise of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” in 1912, the Children's Bureau was established, it was a federal organization that helped children. -
Mary Eliza Mahoney
Mary Eliza Mahoney became the first African-American nurse in the United States and member of a predominately white Nurses Associated Alumnae of the United States and Canada (which eventually became known as the ANA or American Nurses Association) in 1896. Mahoney cofounded the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses (NACGN). -
Mary Adelaide Nutting
Mary Nutting graduated from the first class of the John Hopkins Training School for Nurses 1891.After graduated she served as head nurse and In 1894 she became principal of the school as well as the superintendant of nurses. In 1907 she left John Hopkins and became part of the faculty of Teachers College at Columbia University in New York City and became the world's first professor of nursing. Nutting was named honorary president of the Florence Nightingale International Foundation in 1934. -
Margaret Sanger
Margaret Sanger gave up her nursing career in 1912 to distribute information on birth control. In 1914 she found the National Birth Control League. In 1916, she established the first birth control clinic in the Unites States. Her foundings lead to many arrests, but more importantly lead to the changes in laws giving doctors the right to give advice about birth control to patients. -
Virginia Henderson
Virginia Henderson's began her nursing career in 1921 and became 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." -
Annie Goodrich
Annie Goodrich held many superintendant of nursing positions at various hospitals from 1893-1910. She then went on to become an inspector of Nurses Training Schools, assistant Professor of Nursing and Health, director of Nurses at Henry Street Visiting Nurse Service, Organizing Dean at the Army School of Nursing. Annie's most notable position was when she became the first dean and professor at the Yale School of Nursing in 1923. -
Mary Breckinridge
Mary Breckinridge was an American nurse-midwife whose establishment of neonatal and childhood medical care systems in the United States dramatically reduced mortality rates of mothers and infants.In1925 she founded the Frontier Nursing Service (FNS) to provide professional health care in America's poorest and most isolated regions. -
Ida V, Moffett
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 in 1943. She led in implementation of 1945 legislation which led to licensure for practical nurses. She then guided development of the state's first training program for licensed practical nurses at Baptist Hospital in Gadsden, Alabama. -
Lillian Holland Harvey
In 1948 Lillian Holland Harvey received her master's degree from the Teachers College at Columbia University and initiated the first baccalaureate degree in nursing program in the state of Alabama at Tuskegee Institute. In 1978, she was the first person named Dean Emeritus by Tuskegee University. In 1982, she was presented the prestigious Mary Mahoney Medal by the American Nurses' Association. -
Hildegard Peplau
Hildegard Peplau finished writing her book titled Interpersonal Relations in Nursing in 1948. However, it was not published until 1952 because it was then considered too revolutionary for a nurse to publish a book without a physician co-author. Hildegard was known as the "mother of psychiatric nursing," She was the only nurse to serve the ANA as executive director and later as president, she served two terms on the Board of the International Council of Nurses . -
Dorothea Orem
Dorothea Orem was a nursing theorist and founder of the theory known as the Self Care Deficit Nursing Theory. Orem's theory was published in "Guides for Developing Curricula for the Education of Practical Nurses, 1959 and it states that "nurses have to supply care when the patients cannot provide care to themselves." -
Martha Rogers
Martha Rogers edited a journal called Nursing Science in 1963. During the time after she edited Nursing Science it was said that she began to formulate ideas about her third book An Introduction to the Theoretical Basis of Nursing. -
Madeleine Leininger
Madeleine Leininger was the dean of the University of Washington School of Nursing from 1969 to 1974. She is known worldwide as the founder of transcultural nursing, a program that she created at the School in 1974. She has written or edited 27 books and founded the Journal of Transcultural Nursing to support the research of the Transcultural Nursing Society, which she started in 1974. -
Jean Watson
Jean Watson founded the Internation Caritas Consortium and the original Center for Human Caring in Colorado. These are both foundations using the caring theory to transform practitioners and systems. Watson also established the Watson Caring Sceince Institute in 2008. This is a non-profit foundation that restores the profound nature of caring-healing and support the current health care system to retain caring professional nurses.
