History of Nurse Advocacy

Nurse advocacy dates to Florence Nightingale and her influence on the development of education programs in 1873 that led us to what is known as the Modern Nursing Movement (Nickitas, Middaugh & Feeg, 2020). Florence brought her own chair and created her own seat at the table wherever she went.

Clara Barton was drawn into nursing during the Civil War. She was a battlefield nurse and garnered support for her and other nurses to work directly behind the front lines. After the war, she traveled to Geneva, Switzerland, and learned about the Red Cross. She was invited by one of the founders to start the American branch of the Red Cross, which she did after convincing then-President Chester Arther that the organization would respond to not only battlefield disasters but to natural disasters as well. Clara brought her own chair and established the largest humanitarian organization in the United States (American Red Cross, 2025).

Mary Eliza Mahoney hails as the first black woman to earn a professional nursing license in the United States and the first to graduate from an American nursing school (Mattison, 2022). When opportunities for Black women were extremely limited, she brought her chair and paved the way for other Black women to work as nurses. She worked hard to be treated as a professional and not as a servant. She advocated for the equal treatment of all professional nurses. Although she was one of the original members of the group that later became the American Nurses Association, she split from the group for their failure to welcome nurses of color. As a result, she and two other Black nurses founded the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses (Spring, 2017).

Lillian Wald was a nurse who worked with immigrant families living in the tenements of the Lower East Side of New York. It was said that she was so involved with her work that she moved into a room in the neighborhood so she could be closer to her patients. Lillian brought her own chair which led her to coin the term “public health nurse” and later became the first President of the National Organization for Public Health Nursing. She was most known for founding the Henry Street Settlement, which provided not only healthcare but was also supportive of women and children, and the right of all people to have quality healthcare at home, provided with respect, regardless of their ability to pay (Rothberg, 2022).

Eddie Bernice Johnson took her chair everywhere she went. She was the first female and fist African American chief psychiatric nurse at the VA Hospital in Dallas. She was the first registered nurse elected to the United States Congress, representing the 30th District of Texas and later went on to become the first African American and first female ranking member of the Science, Space and Technology Committee (Mattison, 2022).

Ildaura Murillo-Rohde, a pioneer for Hispanic nurses who advocated for Latina nurses in education, research, and the nursing profession. She fought for diversity in nursing and emphasized the importance of understanding the patient’s cultural needs. She was the first Latina to earn a PhD. Often known for bringing her own chair to the table, she founded the National Association of Hispanic Nurses after realizing her white colleagues in the American Nurses Association were not receptive to the needs of Hispanic nurses at the time (Pinnix, 2024).