Nursing Elizabeth Kerr Porter

Elizabeth Kerr Porter "was a leader in nursing education and an advocate for nurses' rights," (ANA 2011). Porter advocated for nurses' labor rights in terms of the right to collective bargaining and professional organization. Her work helped improve working conditions for nurses and also lobbied against racial discrimination in the nursing professions. Porter served for many years as the president of the American Nurses Association and also as the Dean of the nursing graduate degree program at Case Western Reserve University. Therefore, Elizabeth Kerr Porter promoted the interests of nursing education, enhanced the image of the profession, and also championed the labor rights interests of professional nurses.

Dorothea Dix

Dorothea Dix worked as both an educator and a nurse, but never actually combined her two careers. Dix devoted most of her career to raising awareness about mental illness. Dix advocated for the humane treatment of...

She helped lobby for legislative support for mental health treatment and became an international advocate for the mentally ill. Through her advocacy work with mental illness and prisons, Dix helped transform social stigmas and promote a rehabilitative and humane approach toward both prison inmates and those labeled as mentally ill.
Effie J. Taylor

Euphemia Jane Taylor (Effie J) has been described as "a visionary" and a "nurse whose ideas were very much ahead of their time," (Buckwalter & Church 2009). Taylor's stance helped empower nurses and the nursing profession. Taylor was also concerned with psychiatric nursing, and devoted a large part of her career to the development of holistic care interventions. She is one of the founders of psychiatric nursing, and headed the first psychiatric clinic in the world at Johns Hopkins.

Virginia A. Henderson

Virginia A. Henderson worked as a nurse during the First World War.…