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Dorothea Dix
During a trip to England from 1836-1841, Dix was exposed to people who favored federal involvement in social welfare, as well as the lunacy reform movement. When she returned to America, she observed the treatment and welfare of the insane and social outcasts and sent her research to state legislatures with hopes of legislation to establish asylums. She also proposed legislation to set aside federal land for asylums. Both houses of Congress passed it, but President Pierce vetoed it. -
Mary Ann Bickerdyke
When the American Civil War began in 1861, Mary Bickerdyke joined the field hospital at Fort Donelson and later worked on the first hospital boat. During the war, she was appointed to be chief of nursing under Union General Ulysses S. Grant. -
Linda Richards
In 1873, Linda Richards became America's first professionally trained nurse. During her career, she also started many nursing training programs in the United States amd Japan and created the first system for organizing pateints' individual medical records. -
Mary Eliza Mahoney
In 1879, Mary Mahoney became the first black person to work as a professionally trained nurse. In 1908, she co-founded the National Association of Colored Graduated Nurses (NACGN), which merged with the ANA in 1951. She helped pave the way for equal nursing opportunities for minority groups. -
Clara Barton
Clara Barton founded the American Red Cross on May 21, 1881. Known as he "Angel of the Battlefield," Barton nursed and comforted wounded soldiers of the American Civil War. She also launched a campaign to identify all soldiers missing during the war. In 1870, during a trip to Europe, she became involved with the International Committee of the Red Cross. This neutral committee provided services for victims of war. In 1881, she founded the American Red Cross to assist people in any disaster. -
Lavinia Dock
In 1890, Lavinia Dock wrote one of the first nursing textbooks: Materia_Medica_for_Nurses. This book contained information on various drugs. She also wrote the four-volume History_of_Nursing and several other works. When she retired from nursing, she put all her focus on activism toward social issues. -
Lillian Wald
In 1893, Lillian Wald began teaching a home nursing class for Lower East Side women. She soon began caring for the people that lived there and decided to move closer to her patients. She established the Henry Street settlement so she would have a place to care for the people. She also helped found the NAACP in 1909. -
Isabel Hampton Robb
Isabel Robb organized the American Society of Superintendents of Training Schools for Nurses (now the National League of Nursing Education) in 1893. In 1896, she organized the Nurses' Associated Alumnae of the United States and Canada (now the American Nurses Association). She spent much of her career improving nursing education. Her most notable accomplishment was the introduction of a grading policy for nursing students to prove their abilities and receive qualification. -
Mary Adelaide Nutting
In 1907, Mary Nutting became the world's first nursing professor when she joined the faculty of the Teachers College of Columbia University in New York City. She became head of the university's nursing department in 1910. -
Margaret Sanger
Margaret Sanger was a birth control activist. Her efforts made contraception available to American women. In 1912, she wrote her first column for the New_York_Call entitled "What Every Girl Should Know." She also began distributing her pamphlet Family_Limitation. During her career, she founded an organization that would become known as Planned Parenthood. -
Annie Goodrich
Annie Goodrich was president of the American Nurses Association from 1915 to 1918. She was a graduate of New York Hospital Training School for Nurses. She was involved in some way with many collegiate nursing programs, ultimately leading her to develop and become dean of the first nursing program at Yale University in 1924. Ten years later, she developed the program into the Yale Graduate School of Nursing. -
Mary Breckinridge
In 1925, Mary Breckinridge founded the Kentucky Committee for Mothers and Babies. This later became the Frontier Nursing Service. The organizations original purpose was to train Amrican midwives and care for mothers and children. This expanded to include all medical needs of underserviced rural communities. -
Ida V. Moffett
Ida Moffett became a Registered Nurse on June 3, 1926. She treated patients with exceptional gentleness and comfort. Her life work was the standardization of nursing education and the provision of high-quality care for patients. -
Lillian Holland Harvey
Lillian Harvey started Alabama's first baccalaureate nursing program at Tuskegee University in 1948. -
Hildegard Peplau
In 1952, Peplau's work Interpersonal_Relationships_in_Nursing was published. This work gave the details on Peplau's nursing theory. This theory consisted of the development of some degree of relationship between patient and nurse, instead of the traditional passiveness of treatment. Through many mechanisms (i.e., listening, observation, description, etc.), nurses can better understand a patient's situation and can better treat the patient. -
Madeleine Leininger
Madeleine Leininger developed the idea of transcultural nursing in the mid-1950s. This idea noted the importance of cultural beliefs and practices for each patient as they related to nursing care. -
Dorothea Orem
Dorothea Orem began developing her Self Care Model of Nursing in 1959 and continued until 2001. This model is used mostly in rehabilitation and primary care settings. The model, in its most basic form, says that patients wish to care for themselves and that nurses should only supply care when the patient cannot care for himself. -
Virginia Henderson
In 1966, Virginia Henderson gave a 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." -
Martha Rogers
In 1970, Martha Rogers came up with the Shience of Unitary Human Beings theory. This theory focuses on the importance of the patient's environment. Patient and environment affect each other and cannot be understood apart from each other. Nurses should alter a patient's environment in order to help the person. -
Jean Watson
Jean Watson began formulating her Theory of Human Caring in 1975. This theory goes beyond traditional patint-nurse relations; she says that patient care should be loving, personal, educational, and spiritual for both parties. Mind, body, and spirit must all be cared for in order to achieve health.
