Linda Richards

Linda Richards is a famous nursing pioneer and has the honor of being officially America's first trained nurse.

In 1872, Linda Richards was the first student to enroll in the first class of five nurses in the first American Nurse’s training school. This school was run by Dr. Susan Dimock, at the New England Hospital for Women and Children in Boston.

Linda describes her nursing training: “We rose at 5.30 a.m. and left the wards at 9 p.m. to go to our beds, which were in little rooms between the wards. Each nurse took care of her ward of six patients both day and night. Many a time I got up nine times in the night; often I did not get to sleep before the next call came. We had no evenings out, and no hours for study or recreation. Every second week we were off duty one afternoon from two to five o'clock. No monthly allowance was given for three months.”

Upon graduating one year later, aware of how little she still knew as a nurse, Linda began her quest to acquire more knowledge and then pass this on to others by establishing high quality nurse training schools.

As part of her quest, Linda Richards consulted with Florence Nightingale in England, and was a resident visitor in training at St Thomas’s Hospital & King’s College Hospital, London, and also the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. Returning to the U.S.A. with Miss Nightingale’s warmest wishes, Linda Richards did great pioneer work founding and superintending nurse training schools across the nation. She then went onto do the same in Japan.

She wrote a book about her experiences, which has been republished in 2006 as America's First Trained Nurse Diggory Press, ISBN 1846850681