List of nurses

Alphabetical listing

A–B

C–D

E–F

• Sarah Emma Edmonds (1841–1898), Canadian-American nurse and Union Army soldier who disguised herself as a man to serve during the American Civil War, later working as a nurse in Washington, D.C., hospitals after her military discharge due to malaria.^[17][18]
• Alice Gordon Elliott (1886–1977), Australian nurse trained in Hobart who enlisted in the Australian Army Nursing Service in 1915, serving at military hospitals in Egypt and England during World War I before returning to community welfare work.^[19][20]
• Loretta Ford (1920–2024), American nurse and educator who, in collaboration with pediatrician Henry Silver, established the world's first nurse practitioner program at the University of Colorado in 1965, expanding primary care access in underserved areas.^[21][22][23]

G–H

I–L

• Ida Jean Orlando (born August 12, 1926) was an American nursing educator and theorist who originated the nursing process theory in 1958 while observing nurse-patient interactions at a medical center, later detailed in her 1961 book The Dynamic Nurse-Patient Relationship, which emphasizes deliberate actions based on patient needs rather than routine tasks.^[26][27]
• Eddie Bernice Johnson (1935–2023) was an American politician and registered nurse who became the first African American woman to serve as chief psychiatric nurse at the Dallas Veterans Affairs Hospital, holding the position for 16 years before entering politics as the first registered nurse elected to the U.S. Congress in 1992.^[28][29]
• Imogene King (1923–2007) was an American nursing theorist who developed the Theory of Goal Attainment, focusing on dynamic nurse-patient interactions to achieve mutual goals through perception, judgment, action, and reaction, influencing nursing education and practice.
• Barbara Lumpkin (c. 1937–2018) was an American nurse and lobbyist who led the Florida Nurses Association's governmental affairs for over 34 years starting in 1974, advocating for legislation like the 2016 Barbara Lumpkin Act to expand nurse practitioners' scope of practice.^[30][31]
• Madeleine Leininger (1925–2012) was an American nursing professor and theorist who founded transcultural nursing in the 1970s, developing the Culture Care Theory and Sunrise Model to integrate cultural beliefs into patient care, earning recognition as a Living Legend by the American Academy of Nursing.^[32][33]
• Lillian Wald (1867–1940) was an American nurse and social reformer who coined the term "public health nurse" and founded the Henry Street Settlement in 1893 to provide nursing services to immigrants on New York City's Lower East Side, pioneering school nursing and community health initiatives.^[34][35]

M–N

• Mary Eliza Mahoney (May 7, 1845 – January 4, 1926) was an American nurse who became the first Black woman to complete nurse's training and receive a professional nursing license in the United States in 1879 after graduating from the New England Hospital for Women and Children.^[36] She co-founded the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses in 1908 to advocate for equal opportunities for Black nurses amid widespread racial discrimination in the profession.^[36]
• Mary O'Neill Mundinger (born 1937) is an American nurse educator and health policy expert who served as dean of Columbia University School of Nursing from 1980 to 2006, where she established the first Doctor of Nursing Practice program in 2004 to advance advanced practice nursing roles.^[4]
• Florence Nightingale (12 May 1820 – 13 August 1910) was a British statistician and social reformer recognized as the founder of modern nursing for her work reducing mortality rates at British military hospitals during the Crimean War (1853–1856) from 42% to 2% through sanitation reforms and data-driven hygiene practices.^[3] She established the Nightingale School of Nursing at St Thomas' Hospital in 1860, the first secular nursing school in the world, which standardized nurse training and emphasized evidence-based care.^[37] Her use of statistical analysis, including polar area diagrams, highlighted preventable deaths due to poor sanitation, influencing global healthcare policy.

O–R

• Agnes K. Ohlson (1902–1991) was an American nursing leader who graduated from Peter Bent Brigham School of Nursing in 1926 and served as president of the American Nurses Association from 1954 to 1958, spearheading efforts to standardize nurse licensing requirements across the United States.^[38]
• Phoebe Yates Pember (1823–1913) served as chief matron of the Second Division of Chimborazo Hospital in Richmond, Virginia, from 1862 to 1865, overseeing nursing operations for up to 3,000 Confederate soldiers in one of the largest military hospitals of the Civil War.^[39]
• Sheila Quinn (1920–2016), Dame Sheila Margaret Imelda Quinn DBE FRCN, was a British nursing administrator who served as president of the Royal College of Nursing from 1982 to 1987 and contributed to international nursing standards through the European Standing Conference on Nursing.^[40]
• Helen Repa (1884–1938) was a company nurse for Western Electric who organized triage, rescued victims, and coordinated care during the Eastland Disaster on July 24, 1915, in Chicago, where the steamship capsized, killing over 840 people; she worked for hours amid the chaos on what became the deadliest day in the city's history.^[41]
• Linda Richards (1841–1930) became the first professionally trained nurse in the United States upon graduating from the New England Hospital for Women and Children in 1873, introducing innovations like patient charts and case histories while establishing nurse training programs across Boston, Philadelphia, and Japan.^[42]
• Rachel Robinson (born 1922) is an American registered nurse who earned a master's in psychiatric nursing from New York University, served as director of nursing at a state mental health center in Connecticut, and worked as a researcher and assistant professor at Yale School of Nursing, advancing psychiatric care and education.^[43]

S–T

U–Z

• '''Vivian Bullwinkel''' (18 December 1915 – 3 July 2000) served as an Australian Army nursing sister during World War II, posted to Singapore in 1941.^[11] She survived the Bangka Island massacre on 16 February 1942, where Japanese soldiers machine-gunned 21 nurses into the sea, killing all but Bullwinkel, who was wounded in the diaphragm, hip, and arm but feigned death until captured.^[54] As a prisoner of war for over three years on Bangka Island and Sumatra, she endured malnutrition and forced labor alongside other nurses.^[55] After liberation in September 1945, she testified at war crimes trials but initially withheld details of the massacre to spare families further pain; she later advocated for nursing education, becoming director of nursing at Fairfield Hospital in Melbourne from 1947 until retirement in 1960.^[56] Bullwinkel received the Florence Nightingale Medal in 1957 and was appointed Officer of the Order of Australia in 1993.^[57]
• '''Faye Wattleton''' (born 8 July 1943) is an American nurse and advocate for reproductive rights who earned a Bachelor of Science in nursing from Ohio State University in 1964 and a Master of Science in maternal and infant health from Columbia University.^[58] She worked as a nurse-midwife in Dayton, Ohio, establishing a clinic for prenatal care among low-income women, and later directed Planned Parenthood clinics in New York City.^[59] From 1978 to 1992, Wattleton served as the first African American president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, overseeing expansion of services including abortion amid legal challenges like the Hyde Amendment restricting federal funding.^[60] Her leadership emphasized access to contraception and family planning, drawing from experiences witnessing unsafe abortions as a young nurse.^[61]

• '''Walt Whitman''' (31 May 1819 – 26 March 1892), an American poet, volunteered as a nurse during the American Civil War after his brother was wounded at Fredericksburg in December 1862.^[62] From 1863 to 1865, he provided care in Washington, D.C., military hospitals, attending to thousands of Union and Confederate soldiers by writing letters, distributing supplies, and offering emotional support rather than formal medical treatment.^[63] Whitman documented his experiences in prose and poetry, including Drum-Taps (1865), highlighting the human cost of war and the role of compassionate caregiving amid inadequate sanitation and overcrowding.^[64] His efforts, motivated by democratic ideals of equality, influenced views on male nursing and patient-centered care, though he contracted health issues possibly from hospital exposure, contributing to his later decline.^[65]