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Dorothea Dix
While volunteering at East Cambridge jail, she discovered that patients with mental illnesses were treated as criminals, and had to exist in deplorable circumstances. She took her research to the state legislature, and persuaded them to expand the state's hospital for the insane for better living conditions and treatment. -
Mary Ann Bickerdyke
After the outbreak of the Civil war, she volunteered to accompany and distribute a collection of supplies taken up for the relief of wounded soldiers at a makeshift army hospital in Illinois. She later became the hospital administrator for Union soldiers during the American Civil War. -
Clara Barton
In April of 1862 she established an agency to collect and distribute supplies to wounded soldiers after the First Battle of Bull Run. She is most well known for being the founder of the American Red Cross, which she was later named as the President of around 1881. -
Linda Richards
The first professionally trained American nurse. She also developed the first system of individual medical records for hospitalized patients. -
Mary Eliza Mahoney
The first African-American registered nurse in the U.S. In 1896, Mahoney became one of the original members of the Nurses Associated Alumnae of the United States and Canada. In 1908 she was cofounder of the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses (NACGN). -
Isabel Hampton Robb
Appointed the head of John Hopkins School of Nursing, and also publeished the text "Nursing: Its Principles and Practice. One of her most notable contributions to the system of nursing education was the implementation of a grading policy. She also organized the group known as the Nurses' Associated Alumnae of the U.S. and Canada, which was later renamed the American Nurses Association in 1911. -
Lavinia Dock
In 1890 she created the first manual of drugs for nurses, "Materia Medica." In 1893, Dock, with the assistance of Mary Adelaide Nuttng and Isabel Hampton Robb, founded the American Society of superintendents of Training Schools for Nurses of the United States and Canada, a precursor to the current National League for Nursing. -
Lillian Wald
Founded the Visiting Nurse Service in 1893 and the Henry Street Settlement in 1895. She wanted to ensure that women, children, immagrants, and the poor, along with members of all ethnic and religious groups would realize the promise of "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness." -
Mary Adelaide Nutting
In 1907, she became the world's first professor of nursing at the Teachers College, Columbia University. Prior to that in 1891, she was one of the first to graduate from the John Hopkins School of Nursing. -
Margaret Sanger
Founder of the American Birth Control League, she wanted to promote contraception and negative eugenics. In 1916, she set up the first birth control clinic in the United States. -
Annie Warburton Goodrich
Goodrich would be the originator of the plan for the Army school of nursing. It was started in 1918 as a war measure, with Annie Goodrich as dean. -
Mary Breckinridge
Mary Breckinridge introduced a model rural health care system into the United States in 1925. She was also the founder of the Frontier Nursing Service, and established the Association of Nursing Mid-wives. -
Ida V. Moffett
She is most admired for her high ideals and deep values about patient care. She dedicated her life to providing quality health care and creating standardized nursing education. Samford University in Birmingham Alabama, named there school the Ida V. Moffett school of nursing after her legacy and her involvement in acheiving school accreditaion in Alabama. -
Lillian Holland Harvey
Under her leadership she initiated the first program in Alabama to offer a Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree, at Tuskegee University. She was also the Dean of the Tuskegee University School of Nursing from 1948-1973. -
Hildegard Peplau
She published the book "Interpersonal Relations in Nursing", which was completed in 1948, but not published for four years because it was then considered too revolutionary for a nurse to publish a book without a physicain as co-author. She described nursing as psychodynamic, having different phases of interpersonal processes between the patient and the nurse. She was honored by the American Acadeny of nurses, as a "Living Legend." -
Martha Rogers
In 1954 she was appointed head of the Division of Nursing at New York University. Rogers is best known for developing the Science of Unitary Human Beings and book, "An Introduction to the Theoretical Basis of Nursing." In 1963, she also help edit the journal called Nursing Science. -
Dorothea Orem
Published her theory of "self-care" model of nursing in, "Guides for Developing Curricula for the Education of Practical Nurses." She believed in rehabilitation and primary care where the patient is encouraged to be as independent as possible. -
Madeleine Leininger
Developed the concept of transcultural nursing, bringing the role of cultural factors into the nursing practice. She is the Founder of the Worldwide Transcultural Nursing Movement. -
Jean Watson
She published the Philosphy and Science of Caring in 1979, and is also the Founder of the Center for Human Caring. She is the former Dean and Professor of Nursing at the School of Nursing at the University of Colorado. -
Virginia Henderson
In June 1985, the International Council of Nurses presented her with the first Christianne Reimann Prize. 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." She was also the first full-time nursing instructor in Virginia.
