America's Most Influential Nurses

By gburbank

  • Dorothea Dix

    was placed in charge of all women nurses working in army hospitals

  • Linda Richards

    established a nursing school at the Boston College Hospital

  • Mary Eliza Mahoney

    first african american to graduate from a nursing program

  • Clara Barton

    Founded the American Red Cross

  • Lillian Wald

    founded the Henry Street Settlement

  • Isabel Hampton Robb

    ANA's first president which was at that time called the Nurses' Associated Alumnae of the United States and Canada

  • Lavinia Dock

    joined Lillian Wald at the Henry Street Settlement and worked for 20 years

  • Mary Adelaide Nutting

    bacame the world's first professor of nursing at Columbia University

  • Margaret Sanger

    set up first birth control clinic in the United States

  • Annie Goodrich

    1st woman dean at Yale

  • Ida V. Moffett

    worked as a registered nurse in Alabama-She is one of the most beloved and influential Alabamians

  • Mary Breckinridge

    started the first American school of midwifry

  • Hildegard Peplau

    published "Interpersonal Relationships in Nursing"

  • Madeleine Leininger

    first saw the need for transcultural nursing

  • Dorothea Orem

    started developing the Orem Model of nursing (also known as the 'self-care' model)

  • Virginia Henderson

    defined nursing as "assisting individuals to gain independence in relation to performance of activities contributing to health or its recovery"

  • Martha Rogers

    published "An Introduction to the Theoretical Basis of Nursing"

  • Jean Watson

    first published a book on her theory of human caring