Nursing Leader: Linda Richards

This is a series of post regarding notable nursing leaders who have given many contribution to nursing and their influence uplifted the nursing profession.


Nursing Leaders
Florence Nightingale, Clara Barton, Lillian Wald, Lavinia Dock, Margaret Sanger, and Mary Breckinridge are among the leaders who have made notable contributions both to nursing's history and to women's history. These women were all politically astute pioneers. Their skills at influencing others and bringing about change remain models for political nurse activists today. Contemporary nursing leaders, such as Virginia Henderson, who created a modern worldwide definition of nursing, and Martha Rogers, a catalyst for theory  development.

Richards (1841-1930)
Linda Richards  was America's first trained nurse. She graduated from the New England Hospital for Women and Children in 1873. Richards is known for introducing nurse's notes and doctor's orders. She also initiated the practice of nurses wearing uniforms (American Nurses Association, 2006a). She is credited for her pioneer work in psychiatric and industrial nursing

Born: Linda Richards was born on July 27, 1841, the youngest daughter of Sanford Richards, an itinerant preacher, and his wife, Betsy Sinclair Richards.

After ten years as a schoolteacher, began working as a nurse at Boston City Hospital in 1870. She enrolled for training in 1872 at the New England Hospital for Women and Children, run by female physicians, for a one-year course based on the principles established by Florence Nightingale. Linda received her diploma on September 1, 1873, and went to work as night supervisor at Bellevue Hospital in New York.

After attending Florence Nightingale's training school at St. Thomas Hospital in England in 1877, became superintendent of a new training school at Boston City Hospital, which officially opened in 1878.

Worked in Japan for five years beginning in 1886 to start a training school for nurses. Back in the United States, worked as a visiting nurse and helped train nurses to work with the mentally ill.

She retired in 1911 at age 70 when she wrote her autobiography, Reminiscences of Linda Richards. She suffered a severe stroke in 1923 and lived the remainder of her life at the New England Hospital for Women and Children where she had done her first training. She died on April 16, 1930 in Boston.