Inspiration for Activism!

• First student to enroll in the first nurse training school at the New England Hospital for Women and Children in 1872; graduated in 1873 (6 years before Mary E. Mahoney).
• As night superintendent in the Bellevue Hospital Training School in New York, she created the first system for charting and maintaining medical records – a model that was widely adopted in the United States and England.
• Eager to expand her nursing knowledge, she went to England to study at St. Thomas’ Hospital in London, where she met Florence Nightingale.
• First president of the American Society of Superintendents of Training Schools in 1894.
• Established the first nurse training program in Japan in 1885 and supervised the school at the Doshisha Hospital in Kyoto for five years.
• Her commitment to the education (not the training) of nurses became the foundation for the development of modern nursing education.

Linda Richards’ writings:

• Reminiscences of Linda Richards – America’s First Trained Nurse –
• America’s First Trained Nurse: My Life as a Nurse in America, Great Britain & Japan 1872-1911 –

More information here and here and here.