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Dorothea Dix
Dorothea Dix is known for her tireless work in the 1800s to improve the treatment of the mentally ill. An 1841 visit to a local jail, where she saw insane inmates chained naked to stone walls, spurred her to begin a crusade to improve the housing, clothing and treatment of mentally ill inmates and patients across Massachusetts. At the time, there were no such things as state hospitals or mental health programs; Dix visited prisons, talked with doctors, wrote reports, and pushed successfully for -
Linda Richards
Linda Richards was America's first trained nurse. At Bellevue Linda created a system for charting and maintaining individual medical records for each patient. This was the first written reporting system for nurses which even the famous Nightingale System adopted. -
Clara Barton
Civil War nurse Clara Barton founded the American Red Cross. Barton was a teacher and a U.S. Patent Office clerk before devoting herself to nursing in the American Civil War (1861-65). She earned the nickname "the angel of the battlefield" and in 1864 was named superintendent of all Union nurses. -
Mary Ann Bickerdyke
She led a drive in her town to gather medical supplies, left her children in the care of a friend, and delivered the supplies for the wounded soldiers in the US Civil War. Bickerdyke began accompanying the soldiers into battle, working in field hospitals alongside doctors who would perform quick surgeries and then move on to the next battered man. -
Mary Eliza Mahoney
Mary Mahoney was the first black nurse. Mahoney changed the face of nursing. Black students were accepted to the school as long as they met the requirements. Also, as a professionally trained nurse, she was noted for her expert care of the sick -
Lavinia Dock
Lavinia Dock was an outspoken advocate of Womens' Rights. Perhaps her courageous stand for Womens' Sufferage and Womens' Rights was her greatest contribution to nursing. She realized that if nursing was going to be the profession that the early leaders envisioned, nurses would need the power and respect that only gender equality could bring. Lavinia Lloyd Dock is also remembered for her outstanding contributions to nursing literature -
Isabel Hampton Robb
Isabel Hampton Robb was one of the founders of modern American nursing theory and one of the most important leaders in the history of nursing. 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 order to receive qualifications. -
Mary Adelaide Nutting
Mary Nutting she served as a head nurse at the Johns Hopkins Hospital Training School for Nurses. In 1907, she joined the faculty of Teachers College at Columbia University in New York City and became the world's first professor of nursing. -
Annie Goodrich
Annie Warburton Goodrich was born February 6, 1866 in New Brunswick, New Jersey. She obtained her nursing education at New York Hospital and received her R.N. in 1892. She was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Science (Sc.D.) from Mount Holyoke College in 1921, the honorary degree of Master of Arts (M.A.) from Yale University in 1923, and the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws (LL.D.) from Russell Sage College in 1936. -
Margaret Sanger
Margaret Sanger was educated as and worked as a nurse. She came to believe in the importance to women's lives and women's health of the availability of birth control, a term which she's credited with inventing -
Lillian Wald
Lillian Wald hoped to provide decent health care to residents of New York’s Lower East Side tenements. Her work as the founder of the Henry Street Settlement and the Visiting Nurse Service demonstrated her masterful administrative talents, deep regard for humanity and skill at fundraising and publicizing. Championing the causes of public health nursing, housing reform, suffrage, world peace, and the rights of women, children, immigrants and working people. -
Virginia Henderson
Virginia Avenel Henderson's national and international achievements made her the quintessential nurse of the twentieth century. Her professional career was launched in Virginia where she served as the first full-time nursing instructor at Norfolk Protestant School of Nursing and took an active role in the state nurses association. A pioneer nurse educator, Henderson was instrumental in pushing for the inclusion of psychiatric nursing in educational programs in Virginia. -
Mary Breckinridge
Mary established the Frontier Nursing Service (FNS) in 1925 to provide professional health care in the Appalachian Mountains of eastern Kentucky, one of America's poorest and most isolated regions. Since 1925, the FNS has registered over 64,000 patients, and in its first 50 years, it "delivered 17,053 babies with only 11 maternal deaths.5" -
Ida V. Moffett
Ida V. Moffett advocated compassionate care in Alabama and spearheaded nursing education and development programs for the state. She began nursing in 1926 in Birmingham, and by 1941 was director of nursing at two area hospitals and a nursing school. The nursing school at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama is named after her. -
Lillian Holland Harvey
She used her expertise and talents to work in and through professional organizations to advance the cause of black nurses and the nursing profession. Director of Nursing Service at John A. Andrew Hospital from 1944 to 1948, Dean of the school of Nursing, Tuskegee Institute (University) 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. Dr. Peplau emphasized the nurse-client relationship as the foundation of nursing practice. At the time, her research and emphasis on the give-and-take of nurse-client relationships was seen by many as revolutionary -
Martha Rogers
Martha Rogers was appointed Head of the Division of Nursing at New York University in 1954. In about 1963 Martha edited a journal called Nursing Science. It was during that time that Rogers was beginning to formulate ideas about the publication of her third book An Introduction to the Theoretical Basis of Nursing. -
Dorothea Orem
Dorothea Orem’s self-care deficit theory, a general theory of nursing, is one of the most widely used models in nursing today. Her theory states that nurses have to supply care when the patients cannot provide care to themselves. -
Madeleine Leininger
Madeline Leininger was a pioneer nurse anthropologist. She is considered by some to be the "Margaret Mead of nursing" and is recognized 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
Dr. Jean Watson is a Distinguished Professor of Nursing and former Dean of the School of Nursing at the University of Colorado, as well as founder of the Center for Human Caring. She is known for her work as a theorist, scholar and educator. The Theory of Human Caring was developed between 1975-1979. During this period of time, the Vietnam war had ended, and there was an emphasis on equal rights and opportunities for women. Up to this point, women were the vast majority in the nursing field, as
