Timeline of nursing history

17th century

 * 1633 - The founding of the Sisters (or Daughters) of Charity, Servants of the Sick Poor by Sts. Vincent de Paul and Louise de Merillac. The community would not remain in a convent, but would nurse the poor in their homes, "having no monastery but the homes of the sick, their cell a hired room, their chapel the parish church, their enclosure the streets of the city or wards of the hospital."


 * 1640 - The Sisters assume charge of a hospital at Angers, France.


 * 1654 and 1656 - Sisters of Charity cared for the wounded on the battlefields at Sedan and Arras in France.


 * 1660 - Over 40 houses of the Sisters of Charity exist in France and several in other countries; the sick poor are helped in their own dwellings in 26 parishes in Paris.

18th century

 * 1755- Charlotte Brown,head nurse or matron in the British Army. She traveled with Braddock’s army during the French & Indian War. She was the highest-paid and most respected woman in the army. She supervised nurses, laundresses, and cooks. She kept a diary of her experience.


 * 1783 - James Derham, a slave from New Orleans, buys his freedom with money earned working as a nurse.

1820s

 * c. 1820 - Jensey Snow, a former slave, opens a hospital in Petersburg, Virginia.

1840s

 * 1844 - Dorothea Dix testifies to the New Jersey legislature regarding the state's poor treatment of patients with mental illness.

1850s

 * 1850 - Florence Nightingale begins her training as a nurse at the Institute of St. Vincent de Paul at Alexandria, Egypt
 * 1853 - Florence Nightingale visits the Daughters of Charity in their Motherhouse in Paris to learn their methods.
 * 1854 - Florence Nightingale, a pioneer of modern nursing, and 38 volunteer nurses are sent to Turkey on October 21 to assist with caring for the injured of the Crimean War.
 * 1855 - Mary Seacole leaves London on January 27 to establish a "British Hotel" at Balaklava in the Crimea.
 * 1856 - Biddy Mason is granted her freedom and moves to Los Angeles. She works as a nurse and midwife and becomes a successful businesswoman.
 * 1857 - Ellen Ranyard creates the first group of paid social workers in England and pioneers the first district nursing programme in London.

1860s

 * 1860 - Florence Nightingale's Notes on Nursing: What it is and What it is Not is published.
 * 1861 - Sally Louisa Tompkins opens a hospital for Confederate soldiers in July. She is later made an officer in the army, the only woman to receive that honor.
 * 1867 - Jane Currie Blaikie Hoge publishes her memoirs of nursing in the Union Army, The Boys in Blue.

1870s

 * 1873 - Linda Richards is graduated from the New England Hospital for Women and Children Training School for Nurses and officially becomes America's First Trained Nurse.
 * 1876 - The Japanese term 看護婦 ("Kangofu" or nurse) is used for the first time.
 * 1879 - Mary Eliza Mahoney is graduated from the New England Hospital for Women and Children Training School for Nurses and becomes the first black professional nurse in the U.S.

1880s

 * 1881 - Clara Barton becomes the first President of the American Red Cross, which she founded, on May 21.
 * 1884 - Mary Agnes Snively, the first Ontario nurse trained according to the principles of Florence Nightingale, assumes the position of Lady Superintendent of the Toronto General Hospital’s School of Nursing.
 * 1885 - The first nurse training institute is established in Japan, thanks to the pioneering work of Linda Richards.
 * 1886 - The Nightingale, the first American nursing journal, is published.
 * 1886 - Spelman Seminary establishes the first nursing program in the U.S. specifically for African-Americans.
 * 1888 The monthly journal The Trained Nurse begins publication in Buffalo, New York.

1890s

 * 1890 - Kate Marsden, founder of the St. Francis Leprosy Guild, travels to Yakutia, Siberia in search of a herb reputed to cure leprosy.
 * 1893 - Lillian Wald, the founder of visiting nursing in the U.S., begins teaching a home class on nursing for Lower East Side (New York) women after a trying time at an orphanage where children were maltreated.
 * 1893 - The Nightingale Pledge, composed by Lystra Gretter, is first used by the graduating class at the old Harper Hospital in Detroit, Michigan in the spring.
 * 1897 - The American Nurses Association holds its first meeting in February, as the "Nurses' Associated Alumnae of the United States and Canada".
 * 1897 - Jane Delano becomes Superintendent of Bellevue Hospital.
 * 1899 - Japan establishes a licensing system for modern nursing professionals with the introduction of the "Midwives Ordinance".
 * 1899 - Anna E. Turner goes to Cuba on a cattle boat with nine other nurses to serve two years at a yellow fever hospital in Havana.
 * 1899 - The International Council of Nurses is formed.

1900s

 * 1900 - Dame Agnes Gwendoline Hunt, the founder of orthopaedic nursing, opens a convalescent home for crippled children at Florence House in Baschurch which espouses the yet-unproven theory of open-air treatment.
 * 1901 - New Zealand is the first country to regulate nurses nationally, with adoption of the Nurses Registration Act on September 12.
 * 1902 - Ellen Dougherty of New Zealand becomes the first registered nurse in the world on February 10.
 * 1902 - New York City Board of Education hires Lina Rogers Struthers as North America’s first school nurse.
 * 1902 - The Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service replaces, by royal warrant, the Army Nursing Service.
 * 1908 The United States Navy Nurse Corps is established.
 * 1908 - Representatives of 16 organized nursing bodies meet in Ottawa to form the Canadian National Association of Trained Nurses, which will become the Canadian Nurses Association in 1911.
 * 1909 - The American Red Cross Nursing Service is formed.
 * 1909 - The University of Minnesota bestows the first bachelors degree in nursing, setting a new standard in the training of nurses.

1910s

 * 1915 - Edith Cavell is executed by a German firing squad on October 12 for helping hundreds of Allied soldiers escape to the Netherlands.
 * 1916 - The Royal College of Nursing is founded.
 * 1918 - Lenah Higbee is awarded the Navy Cross for distinguished service in the line of her profession and unusual and conspicuous devotion to duty as superintendent of the U.S. Navy Nurse Corps. She is the first living woman to receive this honor.
 * 1918 - Frances Reed Elliot is enrolled as the first African-American in the American Red Cross Nursing Service on July 2.
 * 1919 - The UK passes the Nursing Act of 1919, which provides for registration of nurses, but it will not become effective until 1923. The first name entered in the register as SRN 001 was Ethel Fenwick.

1920s

 * 1921 - Sophie Mannerheim, a pioneer of modern nursing in Finland, accepts the chairmanship of the Finnish Red Cross.
 * 1923 - The Nursing Act of 1919 becomes effective and Ethel Bedford-Fenwick is the first nurse registered in the UK.
 * 1923 - Yale School of Nursing becomes the first autonomous school of nursing in the U.S. with its own dean, faculty, budget, and degree meeting the standards of the University. The curriculum was based on an educational plan rather than on hospital service needs.
 * 1923 - Mary Breckinridge, the founder of the Frontier Nursing Service, travels 700 miles on horseback surveying the health needs of rural Kentuckians.
 * 1929 - The Japanese Nursing Association is established.

1930s

 * 1931 - The Forgotten Frontier, a documentary about the Frontier Nursing Service, is filmed.
 * 1937 - Sister Elizabeth Kenny publishes her first book, Infantile Paralysis and Cerebral Diplegia: Method of Restoration of Function.
 * 1938 - The Nurses Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery is erected in Section 21 (the "Nurses Section") to honor nurses who served in the armed forces during World War I. Over 600 nurses are buried at Arlington.

1940s

 * 1942 - Banka Island massacre: Twenty one Australian nurses, survivors of a bombed and sunken ship, are executed by bayonet or machine gun by Imperial Japanese Army soldiers on February 16.
 * 1943 - Erna Flegel becomes "Hitler's nurse" in January and serves in that capacity until his suicide at the end of World War II.
 * 1948 - The National Health Service is launched on July 5.

1950s

 * 1951 - The National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses merges with the American Nurses Association.
 * 1951 - Males join the United Kingdom same register of nurses as females for the first time.
 * 1951 - [National Association for Practical Nurse Education and Service]NAPNES along with professional nursing organizations and the U.S. Department of Education created Vocational Nursing standards for education and the LPN / LVN level of nursing was created in the United States.
 * 1952 - The introduction of sedatives transforms mental health nursing.
 * 1955 - Elizabeth Lipford Kent becomes the first African American to earn a PhD in nursing.
 * 1956 - The Columbia University School of Nursing is the first in the U.S. to grant a master's degree in a clinical nursing specialty.
 * 1957 - A Japanese court rules on the regulation regarding night shifts of nurses, limiting them to 8 days a month and banning single-person night shifts altogether.

1960s

 * 1960 - The University of Edinburgh initiates the first degree in nursing.
 * 1963 - Ruby Bradley retires from the U.S. Army Nurse Corps with 34 medals and citations for bravery.
 * 1966 - The Filipino Nurses Association was renamed as The Philippine Nurses Association
 * 1967 - The Salmon Report recommends the reorganisation of the NHS management, ultimately leading to the abolishment of matrons.
 * 1967 - Termination of pregnancy becomes legal in the United Kingdom under the Abortion Act 1967.
 * 1967 - Dame Cicely Saunders sets up the first hospice in a suburb of London.
 * 1969 - Dame Cicely Saunders is a guest speaker at Yale University at the invitation of Florence Wald, Yale University's Nursing Program Dean.

1970s

 * 1971 - The hospice movement is established in the United States when Florence Wald and her associates found Hospice, Inc.
 * 1978 - Estelle Massey Osborne is the first black nurse to be inducted as honorary fellow in the American Academy of Nursing.
 * 1978 - Barbara Nichols is the first black nurse to be elected president of the American Nurses Association.
 * 1978 - Elizabeth Carnegie is the first black to be elected president of the American Academy of Nursing.

1980s

 * 1980 - The Roper, Logan and Tierney model of nursing, based upon the activities of daily living, is published.
 * 1983 - The importance of human rights in nursing was made explicit in a statement adopted by the International Council of Nurses.
 * 1983 - UKCC becomes the profession's new regulatory body in the UK.
 * 1985 - Miss Virginia Henderson was presented with the first Christianne Reimann Prize by the International Council of Nurses in June.
 * 1988 - Anne Casey develops her child-centered nursing model while working as a paediatric oncology nurse in London.

1990s

 * 1990 - Florence Nightingale's birthday (May 12) is declared the official Nursing Day in Japan.
 * 1992 - Diana Wilson is the first nurse elected to the U.S. Congress.
 * 1999 - Elnora D. Daniel is the first black nurse elected president of a major university, Chicago State University.

2000s

 * 2002 - The Nursing and Midwifery Council takes over from the UKCC as the UK's regulatory body.
 * 2007 - ICN Conference is held in Yokohama, Japan.

Histoire de la profession infirmière