Nursing Blog

Dorothea Dix Biography Dorothea Lynde Dix was born on April 4, 1802, in Hampden, Maine. She was the eldest of three children, and her father, Joseph Dix, was a religious fanatic and distributor of religious tracts who made Dorothea stitch and paste the tracts together, a chore she hated. Dorothea Dix was a social reformer whose devotion to the welfare of the mentally ill led to widespread international reforms. After seeing horrific conditions in a Massachusetts prison, she spent the next 40 years lobbying U.S. and Canadian legislators to establish state hospitals for the mentally ill. Her efforts directly affected the building of 32 institutions in the United States. When the Civil War broke out in 1861, she volunteered her services and was named superintendent of nurses. She was responsible for setting up field hospitals and first-aid stations, recruiting nurses, managing supplies and setting up training programs. Although she was efficient and focused, many found her rigid, without ...

Mary Breckinridge - 2002 Mary Breckinridge's leadership dramatically improved rural health care and training for nurse-midwives. A 1910 graduate of St. Luke?s Hospital School of Nursing, New York City, she spent two years in France with post-WWI recovery efforts. There she discovered her professional calling: nursing among the poor and improving health care for women and children. After advanced studies at Teachers College (Columbia University) and further midwifery training in England, she established the Frontier Nursing Service in Kentucky in 1925 to train nurse midwives and send them out into rural communities on horseback or by foot. Under her leadership the FNS substantially reduced maternal and neonatal death rates, and became a model for health care in the U.S. and around the world. Source : http://www.truthaboutnursing.org/press/pioneers.html

Clara Barton was born to a farm family in Oxford, Massachusetts. Even as a child, she wanted to help others. She treated injured pets and cared for her brother when he suffered from a fall from a barn. She was homeschooled by her brothers and sisters. She was always trying to learn new things. While she was still a teenager she became a teacher and taught school for about fourteen years. She was teaching at a private school where she was paid by the parents, but it made her sad to see other children whose parents could not afford to pay a teacher. So she offered to teach those children without pay if the town would provide a place for her to teach. She soon had 600 students! Her next job was working as a clerk in the Patent Office * in Washington, D.C. They wanted to pay her less money because she was a woman, but she insisted they pay her a wage equal to what they were paying the men clerks. When the Civil War started, she wanted to help the soldiers, so she resigned her job at the Pa...

Dorothy Johnson biography: Life story of the nursing theorist of Behavioral System Model Dorothy Johnson was born in Savannah, Georgia, in 1919. She was the youngest in a family of seven. She obtained her Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree from Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, and her Masters in Public Health from Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts. She began publishing her ideas about nursing soon after graduation from Vanderbilt. Most of her education career was in Pediatric Nursing at the University of California, Los Angeles. She withdrew from the academe as a Professor Emeritus at January 1, 1978. Dorothy Johnson has influenced nursing through her publications since the 1950′s. Through her career, Johnson has made her cause on the importance of Research-Based Knowledge about the effect of nursing care on clients. She was an early advocate of Nursing as a Science as well as an Art. She also assumed that nursing had a body of Knowledge reflecting both the sci...

1897-1996 Army School of Nursing, Washington, D.C., 1921 First full-time nursing instructor in Virginia Recipient of the Virginia Historical Nurse Leader Award Member of the American Nurses Association Hall of Fame Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing Authored one of the most widely used definitions of nursing Proposed plan to create districts within the Graduate Nurses Association of Virginia (now Virginia Nurses Association) 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. "Henderson through her efforts as an author, researcher,...

Isabel Adams Hampton Robb (1860–1910) was one of the founders of modern American nursing theory and one of the most important leaders in the history of nursing. She graduated from the Bellevue Hospital Training School for Nurses in 1883. After gaining experience working as a nurse in Rome she traveled back to the United States to take a position as superintendent of nursing at the Cook County Hospital nursing school in Chicago. In her time as head of the nursing program there she implemented an array of reforms that set standards for nursing education. Most of these standards are still followed today. 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. In 1889 she was appointed head of the new Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, where she continued to suggest reforms, participated in teaching, and published the text Nursing...

Sr.Callista Roy, a prominent nurse theorist, writer, lecturer, researcher and teacher Professor and Nurse Theorist at the Boston College of Nursing in Chestnut Hill Born at Los Angeles on October 14, 1939 as the 2nd child of Mr. and Mrs. Fabien Roy she earned a Bachelor of Arts with a major in nursing from Mount St. Mary's College, Los Angeles in 1963. a master's degree program in pediatric nursing at the University of California ,Los Angeles in 1966. She also earned a master’s and PhD in Sociology in 1973 and 1977 ,respectively. Sr. Callista had the significant opportunity of working with Dorothy E. Johnson Johnson's work with focusing knowledge for the discipline of nursing convinced Sr. Callista of the importance of describing the nature of nursing as a service to society and prompted her to begin developing her model with the goal of nursing being to promote adaptation. She joined the faculty of Mount St. Mary's College in 1966, teaching both pediatric and maternity...

Martha Elizabeth Rogers was born on May 12, 1914; sharing a birthday with Florence Nightingale. She began her academic career when she entered the University of Tennessee in Knoxville in 1931 where she remained for 2 years. She stated that: "I took the science-med course. It was more substantial than straight pre-med and included more science and maths. I took psychology, French, Zoology, Genetics, Embryology and many other courses" (Hektor, 1989). However, she didn’t complete the course, instead she entered nursing school at Knoxville General Hospital in September 1933. She received her nursing diploma in 1936 and her Bachelor of Science degree in Public Health Nursing form the George Peabody College in Nashville in 1937 and then became a public health nurse in rural Michigan where she stayed for 2 years before returning to further study. In 1945 she earned her master’s degree from Teacher’s College Columbia University, New York. She then became a public health nurse in Har...

Ida Jean Orlando, a first-generation American of Italian descent was born in 1926. She received her nursing diploma from New York Medical College, Lower Fifth Avenue Hospital, School of Nursing, her BS in public health nursing from St. John's University, Brooklyn, NY, and her MA in mental health nursing from Teachers College, Columbia University, New York. Orlando was an Associate Professor at Yale School of Nursing where she was Director of the Graduate Program in Mental Health Psychiatric Nursing. While at Yale she was project investigator of a National Institute of Mental Health grant entitled: Integration of Mental Health Concepts in a Basic Nursing Curriculum. It was from this research that Orlando developed her theory which was published in her 1961 book, The Dynamic Nurse-Patient Relationship. She furthered the development of her theory when at McLean Hospital in Belmont, MA as Director of a Research Project: Two Systems of Nursing in a Psychiatric Hospital. The results of t...

Faye Glenn Abdellah (born 1919) dedicated her life to nursing and, as a researcher and educator, helped change the profession's focus from a disease-centered approach to a patient-centered approach. She served as a public health nurse for 40 years, helping to educate Americans about the needs of the elderly and the dangers posed by AIDS, addiction, smoking, and violence. As a nursing professor, she developed teaching methods based on scientific research. Abdellah continued to work as a leader in the nursing profession into her eighties. Abdellah was born on March 13, 1919, in New York City. Years later, on May 6, 1937, the German hydrogen-fueled airship Hindenburg exploded over Lakehurst, New Jersey, where 18-year-old Abdellah and her family then lived, and Abdellah and her brother ran to the scene to help. In an interview with a writer for Advance for Nurses, Abdellah recalled: "I could see people jumping from the zeppelin and I didn't know how to take care of them,...

Betty Neuman Biography Born 1924 near Lowell, Ohio. In 1947 she received RN Diploma from Peoples Hospital School of Nursing, Akron, Ohio. She then moved to California and gained experience as a hospital, staff, and head nurse; school nurse and industrial nurse; and as a clinical instructor in medical-surgical, critical care and communicable disease nursing. In 1957 Dr. Neuman attended the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) with double major in psychology and public health. She received BS in nursing from UCLA. In 1966 she received Masters degree in Mental Health, Public Health Consultation fom UCLA. Dr. Neuman is recognized as pioneer in the field of nursing involvement in community mental health. She began developing her model while lecturing in community mental health at UCLA. In 1972 her model was first published as a 'Model for teaching total person approach to patient problems' in Nursing Research. In 1985 she received her doctorate in Clinical Psychology from ...

Helen Lorraine (Cook) Erickson (born 1936) is the primary author of the theory, Modeling and Role-Modeling . Her work, co-authored with Tomlin, E. and Swain, M.A., was derived from years of clinical practice, was first published in 1983 by Prentice Hall and later by the EST Company. In 2006 she edited a book that provides additional, in-depth information that describes relations among soul, spirit, and human form. This 522 page book contains chapters authored by several Modeling and Role-Modeling scholars. Three other books are in process. A society for the advancement of Modeling and Role-Modeling was established in 1985 at the University of Michigan. The Society meets biannually and provides information regarding related research, publications, etc. Erickson was married to Lance Erickson in 1957 in Clare, Michigan. Together they live in Cedar Park, Texas where she holds the title of Professor Emeritus, The University of Texas at Austin. Reference : wikipedia

byname Lady of the Lamp ( 1820 – 1910 ) (born May 12, 1820, Florence [Italy]—died Aug. 13, 1910, London, Eng.) foundational philosopher of modern nursing, statistician, and social reformer. Nightingale was put in charge of nursing British and allied soldiers in Turkey during the Crimean War. She spent many hours in the wards, and her night rounds giving personal care to the wounded established her image as the “Lady with the Lamp.” Her efforts to formalize nursing education led her to establish the first scientifically based nursing school—the Nightingale School of Nursing, at St. Thomas' Hospital in London (opened 1860). She also was instrumental in setting up training for midwives and nurses in workhouse infirmaries. She was the first woman awarded the Order of Merit (1907). Family ties and spiritual awakening Florence Nightingale was the second of two daughters born, during an extended European honeymoon, to William Edward and Frances Nightingale. (Willia...