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Dorothea Dix
Dorothea Dix began her drive for improvement in the care of the mentally ill in Massachusetts in 1841. Dix volunteered her services to the Union and received the appointment in June 1861 placing her in charge of all women nurses working in army hospitals. Dix became the Union's Superintendent of Female Nurses during the Civil War -
Mary Ann Bickerdyke
Mary Ann Bickerdyke was a nurse and health care provider to the Union Army during the American Civil War around 1861. Upon arriving in Cairo, Bickerdyke used supplies to establish a hospital for the Northern soldiers. Bickerdyke spent the remainder of the war traveling with various Union armies, establishing more than three hundred field hospitals to assist sick and wounded soldiers. -
Linda Richards
Linda Richards was one of five women to sign up for a nurse-training program at the New England Hospital for Women and Children. She was the program's first graduate in 1873. The first professionally trained American nurse; she 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 Eliza Mahoney
Mary Eliza Mahoney was the first African-American registered nurse in the U.S.A in 1879. Mary is most noted for her efforts to improve the status of African-American nurses and promote the furthering of intercultural relations. Mary was the cofounder of the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses in 1908. -
Clara Barton
Clara Barton founded the American Red Cross in Washington, D.C. on May 21, 1881. Barton headed the Red Cross for 23 years, during which time it conducted its first domestic and overseas disaster relief efforts, aided the United States military during the Spanish-American War, and campaigned successfully for the inclusion of peacetime relief work as part of the International Red Cross Movement-the so-called "American Amendment" that initially met with some resistance in Europe. -
Lavinia Dock
Lavinia Dock, after serving as a visiting nurse among the poor, compiled the first, and long most important, manual of drugs for nurses, Materia Medica for Nurses (1890). Lavinia Dock also was one of the founders of American Society of Superintendents of Training Schools for Nurses in 1893, which became the National League of Nursing Education in 1912. -
Isabel Hampton Robb
Isabel Hampton Robb, one of the founders of American Society of Superintendents of Training Schools for Nurses in 1893, which became the National League of Nursing Education in 1912. She was head of the nursing program in Chicago where she implemented an array of reforms that set standards for nursing education. One of her most notable contributions to the system of nursing education was the implementation of a grading policy for nursing students. Students would need to prove their competency in -
Lillian Wald
In 1895, Lillian Wald established the Henry Street Settlement to further aid those in need. Another of her concerns was the horrendous treatment of African-Americans, and as a consequence, she was one of the seminal founders, in 1909, of the NAACP. -
Mary Adelaide Nutting
In 1907 Mary Adelaide Nutting joined the faculty of Teachers College, Columbia University and became the world's first professor of nursing. She helped found the American Journal of Nursing in 1900. The following year she established a six-month preparation course in hygiene, elementary practical nursing, anatomy, physiology, and materia medica for entering students to prepare them for ward work. -
Margaret Sanger
In 1914, Margaret Sanger launched The Woman Rebel, an eight page monthly newsletter promoting contraception, with the slogan "No Gods and No Masters" (and coining the term "birth control”) and that each woman be "the absolute mistress of her own body." In 1916, Sanger opened a family planning and birth control clinic the first of its kind in the United States. -
Annie Goodrich
Annie Goodrich served as president of the American Nurses Association from 1915 to 1918. During her career, Goodrich was also president of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Nursing, New York State Inspector for Training Schools, director of nursing service at Henry Street Settlement, professor of nursing at Teacher's College, Columbia University, and dean of the Army School of Nursing. She developed, and in 1924 became dean of, the first nursing program at Yale University. She was respons -
Mary Breckinridge
Mary Breckinridge Established the Frontier Nursing Service in 1925 to provide professional health care in the Appalachian Mountains of eastern Kentucky, one of America's poorest and most isolated regions. Frontier Nursing Service, 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. T -
Ida V. Moffett
In 1943 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. She led in implementation of 1945 legislation which led to licensure for practical nurses. -
Lillian Holland Harvey
Lillian Holland Harvey was the Dean of the school of Nursing, Tuskegee Institute 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 Peplau was a nursing theorist whose seminal work Interpersonal Relations in Nursing was published in 1952. Hildegard Peplau, the "mother of psychiatric nursing," was a true pioneer in the development of the theory and practice of psychiatric and mental health nursing. She is the only person to have been both the executive director and the president of ANA. -
Dorothea Orem
The Orem model of nursing was developed between 1959 and 2001 by Dorothea Orem and is also known as the 'Self Care' Model of Nursing. It is particularly used in rehabilitation and primary care settings where the patient is encouraged to be as independent as possible. She completed the 6th edition of Nursing:Concepts of Practice, published by Mosby in January 2001. -
Martha Rogers
In 1963, Martha Rogers developed the theory she identified as "a paradigm for nursing -- the science of unitary human beings," and conducted "philosophical and theoretical investigations of the nature and direction of unitary human development." A proponent of rigorous scientific study, she wrote three books that enriched the learning experience and influenced the direction of nursing research for countless students. An Introduction to the Theoretical Basis of Nursing (1970), the last of which i -
Virginia Henderson
In 1966, Virginia Henderson became famous for the 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." A modern legend in nursing, she has earned the title "foremost nurse of the 20th century." -
Madeleine Leininger
Madeleine Leininger 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. She has written or edited 27 books and founded the Journal of Trans-cultural nursing to support the research of the Trans-cultural Nursing Society, which she started in 1974. -
Jean Watson
Jean Watson founded the Original Center for Human Caring at the University of Colorado, College of Nursing in 1986. Watson believes that the main focus in nursing is on carative factors. She believes that for nurses to develop humanistic philosophies and value system, a strong liberal arts background is necessary. She previously served as Dean of Nursing at the University Health Sciences Center and is a Past President of the National League for Nursing.
