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Dix
While working as a nurse in the Civil War, Dix convinced the military officials that women could perform the work acceptably and started to recruit plain looking women who were above the age of 30. She became the Union’s Superintendent of Female Nurses and was in charge of all the women nurses working in army hospitals at the age of fifty nine in 1861. -
Richards
After her husband died in 1869, Linda moved to Boston and was hired as an assistant nurse at the Boston City Hospital for 3 months. She saw an advertisement for a nursing training program at New England Hospital for Women and Children. After a year of training, she was the first to graduate from the nursing program. In 1874, Linda took over the Boston Training School. -
Clara Barton
At the age of fifteen, Barton started teaching school and established a free public school in Bordentown, New Jersey. She cared for soldiers during the Civil War. By the end of the war, she founded the American Red Cross in 1881. -
Robb
Isabel was known for implementing reforms which are largely still followed today. The most known to the system of nursing education was the implementation of a grading policy for nursing students. In 1889, she became head of the new Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, where she participated in teaching and later wrote a book, “Nursing: Its Principles and Practice”. -
Mahoney
Mahoney was known as the first African American to study and work as a professionally trained nurse in the U.S. She graduated in 1879. In 1908, she co-founded the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses. -
Sanger
Sanger was an American birth control activist, sex educator, and nurse. She opened up the first birth control clinic in the United States in 1916. She was later arrested for giving out information on contraception. -
Doc
Doc was known as a feminist, author, social activist, and of course a nurse. She wrote a four volume history of nursing that was used as a standard nurse’s manual of drugs. She participated in protest movements for women’s rights that later contributed to the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920. She also campaigned for legislation to allow nurses rather than physicians to control their profession. -
Anna Goodrich
Goodrich graduated from the New York Hospital Training School for Nurses. She served as the president of the American Nurses Association from 1915 to 1918. She also served as president and director of many other programs and universities. In 1924, she developed and became the dean of the first nursing program at Yale University. -
Moffett
For more than 70 years, Moffett was known for her nursing care and leadership for the Baptist Health System. She served at Princeton Baptist Medical Center for the majority of her career and mentored more than four thousand nurses throughout her lifetime. She was also the head of nursing for the Baptist hospitals from 1941 to 1970. She strongly believe that “nothing take the place of the personal touch”. -
Breckenridge
Breckenridge was known as an American nurse midwife and founded the Frontier Nursing Service. She started family care centers in the Appalachian mountains and helped many people with her hospitals. In 1952 she completed her memoir “Wide Neighborhoods”. -
Leininger
Leininger is known as a pioneering nursing theorist and nursing professor. In 1961, her contributions to the nursing theory were published involving the discussion of what it is to care. She brought the role of cultural factors into the nursing practice by developing the concept of transcultural nursing. -
Peplau
Peplau was the first nursing theorist to publish a nursing theory of interpersonal relations since Florence Nightingale (1820-1910), and helped to revolutionize the work of nurses. Being a primary contributor to mental health laws, her goals led her to the treatment of patients with behavior and personality disorders. She served as president of the American Nurses Association from 1970 to 1972 and a second vice president from 1972 to 1974. -
Henderson
Henderson has twelve honorary doctoral degrees and is an inspiration to nurses everywhere and has influenced the nursing practice, education, and research throughout the world. In 1979, she was the first to receive the Virginia Henderson Award from the Connecticut Nurses Association for outstanding contributions to nursing research. -
Rogers
Rogers was known as an American nurse, researcher, theorist, and author. She developed the Science of Unitary Human Beings and wrote the book An Introduction to the Theoretical Basis of Nursing. She specialized in public health nursing and established the Visiting Nurse Service of Phoenix, Arizona. She was recognized as Professor Emeritus in 1979. -
Orem
Orem began her nursing career at Providence Hospital School of Nursing in Washington, D.C. She published a couple of books about nursing, the first one being “The Hope of Nursing”. The second one she published was about concepts of nursing in 1971. She received the Catholic University of America Alumni Association Award for Nursing Theory in 1980. -
Watson
Watson is known as an American nurse theorist and professor. She is best known for her Theory of Human Caring. Her research on caring has been incorporated into education and the care of patients at many nursing schools and healthcare facilities around the world. In 2008, she founded the non-profit Watson Caring Science Institute.
