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Dorothea Dix
Dorothea Dix: During the Civil War (1861-1865), Dorothea Dix served as Superintendent of United States Army Nurses. Dix was the most visible humanitarian reformer of the nineteenth century by being an advocate for improvements in the treatment of patients suffering from mental and emotional disorders. -
Period: to
The History of Nursing from 1861-1979
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Mary Ann Bickerdyke
In 1862, during the Civil War Mary Bickerdyke served as a hospital administartor for the Union soldiers. Bickerdyke ranked over all the other men and continued to help nurse the soldiers back to health. -
Linda Richards
After years of training and helping others, Linda Richards became the first student to enroll and the first to graduate from the nursing program. In 1878, Richards established the first nursing program in Japan and continued to establish nursing programs in Philadelphia, Massachusetts, and Michigan. -
Clara Barton
In 1881, Clara Barton established the American Red Cross in Washington D.C. and she became the first president of the organization. Barton expanded the concept of the Red Cross to include assisting in any natural disaster which gave the United States the “Good Samaritan of Nations” label for the organization. She led one of the group’s first major relief efforts by responding to the Great Fire of 1881 in Michigan. -
Isabel Hampton Robb
Isabel is known as one of the most important leaders in the history of nursing. In 1883, Isabel Robb was also one of the founders of the modern American nursing theory. Robb’s most notable contributions to the nursing program was the grading policy for nursing students. -
Lavinia Dock
In 1893, Lavinia Dock founded the American Society of superintendents of Training Schools for Nurses of the United States and Canada. Dock also wrote a four volume history of nursing that was used as a standard for many years by nurses as a manual of drugs. -
Mary Eliza Mahoney
In 1896, Mary Eliza Mahoney became one of the original members of the white Nurses Associated Alumnae of the United States and Canada. Mahoney was the first African-American nurse. -
Mary Adelaide Nutting
In 1907, Mary Nutting became the world’s first professor of nursing at the Columbia University in New York City. Nutting helped to found the “American Journal of Nursing” in 1900. -
Lillian Wald
Known as a devouted nurse, Lillian Wald founded the American community nursing. In 1909, Wald was one of the seminal founders of the NAACP. She is widely regarded in the United States and Canada as the founder of visiting nursing. -
Margaret Sanger
In 1912, Margaret Sanger gave up nursing work to dedicate her time to the distribution of birth control information. Sanger was the founder of American Birth Control League. Sanger’s many arrests and prosecutions helped to change the law in allowing doctors the right to give birth control advice to patients. -
Annie Goodrich
: One of the major activities that Annie Goodrich completed was that she served as President of the American Nurses Association and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Nursing. Annie established the Army School of Nursing in 1918. She became dean of Yale University’s first nursing program in 1924 and developed the program into the Yale Graduate School of Nursing. -
Mary Breckinridge
In 1925, Mary Breckinridge established the Frontier Nursing Service (FNS) to provide professional care to the eastern part of Kentucky. Breckinridge dedicated her life to improving the health of women and children. -
Hildegard Peplau
During World War II (1939-1945), Hildegard Peplau was a member of the Army Nurse Corps. Peplau is known as the “mother of psychiatric nursing.” She is the only nurse to serve the ANA as executive director and later as president, as well as serving two terms on the Board of the International Council of Nurses. -
Ida V. Moffett
In 1943, Ida V. Moffett organized Alabama’s first unit of the Cadet Nurse Corps which is a federal program of the Public Health Service that was established to increase the shortage of nurses, and oversaw the construction of a second building for the School of Nursing. Moffett helped to gain state accredidation for Alabama’s first four-year college nursing program and worked to gain equal treatment for African American nurses also. -
Lillian Holland Harvey
Working as Dean of the Tuskegee University school of Nursing in 1948, Harvey became the first to offer a Bachelor of Science degree in the state of Alabama. Harvey served on the board of Directors of the National League for Nursing and the American Journal of Nursing Company. -
Dorothea Orem
In 1959, Dorothea Dix contributed general theory of nursing which consists of; Self-care theory, self-care deficit theory, and nursing systems theory. Dorothea’s key contribution to nursing is the continued evolution of original ideas to help further improve the nursing practice, function, self-care needs, and systems of nursing based on research. -
Virginia Henderson
The contribution that Virginia Henderson is best known for is her definition of nursing in 1966 which is: “The unique function of the nurse to assist the individual, sick or well, in the performance of those activities contributing to health or its recovery that he would perform unaided if he had the necessary strength, will or knowledge.” Henderson became the first full-time nursing instructor at Norfolk Protestant School of Nursing and took an active role in the state nurses association. -
Madeleine Leininger
In 1974, Madeleine Leininger created a program called the Transcultural Nursing at the School of Nursing in Washington. Leininger is recognized worldwide as the founder of transcultural nursing. -
Martha Rogers
Martha is best known for developing the Science of Unitary Human Beings and her book, “An Introduction to the Theoretical Basis of Nursing.” Rogers established and eventually became the Executive Director of the first Visiting Nurse Service in Phoenix, Arizona. In 1979, Rogers continued to have an active role in the development of nursing and the SUHB. -
Jean Watson
In 1979, Jean Watson made a major contribution to the nursing program when she developed the “Caring Theory.” Watson is a well known published author of many nursing books that are used today.
