Nurses who led the way in which: Virginia Avenel Henderson

Considered some of the famous nurses in history, Virginia Avenel Henderson is credited with developing the idea of nursing during which defined the role of a nurse in health care. Henderson was trained on the Army School of Nursing in 1921 and received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Teachers College, Columbia University. She began as a public health nurse on the Henry Street Settlement in New York and shortly became the primary full-time nursing instructor on the Protestant nursing school in Norfolk.

In 1953, Henderson began she taught on the Yale School of Nursing and continued teaching there in retirement until 1996. Throughout her profession, she wrote and published quite a few textbooks, in addition to a 12-year project during which she covered the primary 60 years of nursing research. Her nursing theory, the “Henderson Model”, is used worldwide as the usual in nursing practice.

Henderson has received 13 honorary degrees, was inducted into the American Nurses Association Hall of Fame and received the International Council of Nurses’ most prestigious honor in nursing, the Christiane Reimann Award.

She died in 1996 on the age of 98 in Connecticut. To today, she is known as the “first lady of nursing”.