Women Who Shaped the Nursing Profession

Dorothea Dix founded the first public mental hospital, the Harrisburg State Hospital in Pennsylvania

Jul 10, 1851

Linda Richards heads the Boston Training School and turns it into one of the best nursing programs in the U.S.

Jul 10, 1874

Richards was the first American trained nurse.
She created a system that kept track of each individual patient’s medical records.

Mary Eliza Mahoney is the first African American to graduate with a professional nursing license

Jul 10, 1879

She cofounded the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses in 1908, which focused on improving African American status in nursing

Clara Barton founded the American Red Cross

Jul 10, 1881

Isabel Hampton Robb writes and publishes Education Standards for Nurses

Jul 10, 1907

Robb was appointed head of the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing in 1889. She contributed to nursing in the field of education, writing and publishing Nursing Ethics in 1900.

Lavinia Dock wrote Materia Medica for Nurses, one of the first nursing textbooks

Jul 10, 1921

Margaret Sanger opens the first legal birth control clinic in America

Jul 10, 1923

Annie Goodrich develops the first nursing program at Yale University, as well as became its dean

Jul 10, 1924

Goodrich was president of the American Nurses Association (ANA) from 1915-1918

Mary Breckinridge establishes the Frontier Nursing Service

Jul 10, 1925

FNS allowed people in the Appalachian Mountains of eastern Kentucky, a very poor region in the U.S., to receive professional nurse health care

Hildegard Peplau founded and taught the first classes for graduate nurses specializing in psychiatric health at Teachers College

Jul 10, 1950

Peplau is often referred to as the “mother of psychiatric nursing." She also taught the theory based on interpersonal care, with both individual and group therapy.

Martha Rogers develops the Science of Unitary Human Beings

Jul 10, 1963

Ida V. Moffett becomes Chief of Nursing at Birmingham Baptist Hospital

Jul 10, 1967

Moffett was a big contributor to health care in Alabama.
She became Head Nurse at Highland Avenue Baptist Hospital in 1934.
The Birmingham Baptist Hospitals School of Nursing changed its named in 1968 to Ida V. Moffett School of Nursing.

Dorothea Orem publishes the Self-Care Theory

Jul 10, 1971

It focuses on a person’s responsibility of his or her health as well as nursing being a service and an art

Virginia A. Henderson publishes the first annotated index of nursing research, the Nursing Studies Index

Jul 10, 1971

Conducted a Nursing Studies Index Project from 1959-1971, which contributred to nursing research

Madeleine Leininger starts the Transcultural Nursing Society

Jul 10, 1974

She focused on learning a patient's culture and background in order to provide proper care for them.

Jean Watson founded the Watson Caring Science Institute

Jul 10, 2007

founded the Watson Caring Science Institute