Top 5 Famous Nurses

5. Edith Cavell

Edith Cavell spent much of her time helping those who really needed her, and in the end she died for doing something she loved. It. She was born in Norfolk, England on December 4, 1865 and entered the profession of nursing at the age of 20. She decided to move to Belgium to begin her career, and her she was given the title of matron to the Berkendael Medical Institute located in Brussels. From 1907 until the War began in 1914, Cavell spent much of her time modernizing the nursing profession in Belgium. During the summer of 1914, Cavell was in England visiting family when the war began. Her family begged her to stay but she felt obligated to go back to Brussels to help wounded soldiers. Her hospital soon became a Red Cross location and soldiers from all over, including those from France, England, and Germany were treated as necessary.
During this time, German posters were all over stating that anyone who helps or hidew English or French soldiers would be punished. Despite obvious public warnings, Cavell assisted in helping Allied prisoners escape and hide from the Germans. After testing her fate, the hospital was raided by German soldiers and Cavell was arrested in 1915. Despite having a lawyer who explained she acted out of compassion to help people, Cavell was charged with treason and was sentenced to death by firing squad. On October 12, 1915, Cavell was executed. Today there are various commemorations for her service, including one in Trafalgar Square.
4. Mary Breckinridge


Mary Breckinridge, born in Kentucky in 1881, is best known for creating the Frontier Nursing Service which was able to service and provide health care to those who were too poor to afford it or those who lived in a very remote location throughout the Appalachian region in Kentucky. During her lifetime, she was also able to set up the first school in the U.S. that trained and certified women to become midwives. Through both of her accomplishments, she was able to help reduce the mortality rates of both infants and pregnant mothers in a time when medical help for such things weren’t very advanced.
Breckingridge graduated from St. Luke’s Hospital Training School in 1910. She then had two children, but both of them died very young. This really motivated her to improve the health of other people, especially infants and mothers.
She travelled all over, including to Washington, D.C. to aide those who were sick from the influenza epidemic in 1918. She also joined the Comité Américain Pour les Régions Dévastées de la France and within the same year decided to create a visiting nurses program, which later became a huge success as many women were trained as proper midwives and nurses who would travel to provide assistance. In 1921 she returned to Kentucky to bring her idea to the U.S. and returned to school at the Teachers College of Columbia University in New York in 1922. In 1923 she surveyed her home town and found that there were no certified doctors or midwives to help promote healthy living. In 1924 after going to the British Hospital for Mothers and Babies, she became a certified midwife, and a year later provided her services throughout the Appalachia. Through her program women would be sent to England to be properly trained as nurses and midwives.
3. Mary Mahoney

Mary Eliza Mahoney makes the list at #3 for her amazing achievements as not only a nurse, but an African American during her time, as she would become the first registered African American nurse. She was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts in 1845 and had a high interest in nursing as a teenager. However, this would be a struggle and most definitely a daunting task, as many women in her time, especially Black women, would simply make themselves content in doing domestic work, which often including hours upon hours of cleaning, scrubbing, and other shores. To avoid this, she spent plenty of time in the New England Hospital for Women and Children working as an unofficial nurse’s assistant for almost 15 years.  After, Mahoney decided to go into school and get the education she needed to further her career. In 1879, she graduated from nursing school after 16 months; from a class made up of only 40 people, Mahoney, 34 at the time, the only African American, and three other females graduated.
After getting her degree, Mahoney did a lot of work as a private duty nurse along the East coast. During this time she became a well known member of the Nurses Associated Alumnae (ANA), which at the time was made up of predominately white women. In 1908 she cofounded the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses (NACGN) which allowed for more African American nurses to be highly successful in their careers.
2. Clara Barton

In war and in disaster, there is one group that never fails to come to the aid, and that is the American Red Cross. Whether you support them or not, the group has been very helpful ever since its creation in 1881 by no one else then nurse Clara Barton. Barton originally got the idea for such an organization some 20 years before the Red Cross was found. During the Civil War in 1861, Barton was living in Washington D.C. and first-hand experienced the Battle of Bull Run. When the battle ended and wounded soldiers were left to die, Barton decided that there needed to be a way for the Northern states to collect, donate, and distribute the needed goods and medical supplies for those affected by the war. In 1862, she was assigned the job of traveling in military ambulances to help injured soldiers in the Northern side as well as on the Southern side of the war. Throughout the entirety of the Civil War, Barton continued to tend to wounded soldiers are necessary. By the end of the war, President Abraham Lincoln himself appointed Barton to be the one to go out and look for, as well as identify, any soldiers from the Union. With all of this experience during the Civil War, Barton saw how successful her ideas were and decided to create the Red Cross.
Though the first Red Cross meeting began with only 15 people, today the organization is a strong 100 million, if not more, people. The organization is well known for helping during natural disasters, but it has also branched out to take blood donations as well as help the homeless.
1. Florence Nightingale

Florence Nightingale is one of the many nurses who are known internationally. She is usually credited with founding today’s nursing profession. When she was a teenager, Nightingale believed that a divine voice called to her and wanted her to become a nurse, but her social status definitely didn’t fit the job, as she was born and raised by very well-off British family. During her time, women of her age and social status were to become mothers, and nursing was well out of the picture as it was often seen as a profession someone from a very low class would have. However, in 1851, she was given permission from her father to go to Germany in order to study nursing. In 1853, the Crimean War between Germany and Russia broke out, and since she was in the vicinity, Nightingale was sent to a Scutari army hospital in order to help care for wounded and dying soldiers. While doing her job as a nurse, Nightingale also took the time to look around and figure out why so many of the soldiers were dying. She then realized that the hospital conditions were a wreck, and soon became a huge advocate for cleaning and fixing up hospitals. Along with this, she was also able to use her mathematical skills to come up with improved ways to look at medical data that was collected. She continued to work in the hospital until 1857 when she returned home.
After returning home, Nightingale was given the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to meet Queen Victoria. Here she was able to discuss new ideas that would be used in order to form the Army Medical College. Nightingale would never return to hands on nursing, instead she spent most of her time writing manuals and books that could be published for public use, especially by medical schools. Her literature would eventually help shape what we know as nursing today.
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