Dripping Life

On May 12, nurses around the world pay homage to Florence Nightingale on her 202nd birthday. As the founder of nursing, this amazing woman from a wealthy British family led the way for women to be trained in patient care rather than their first utilization -- as hospital housekeepers.

But there is another woman American nurses should recognize during Nurses week, a pioneer who formulated and then insisted in providing American women with formal training in caring for patients. You’ve probably never heard of her. This country’s first trained nurse, Linda Richards, was as much of a pioneer as her friend and mentor Florence Nightingale.

Richards not only had the distinction of being the first American woman to becom a graduate nurse, but she also was the founder of more than a score of nurse training schools here and abroad.

From her girlhood, Linda dreamed of becoming a nurse. She had read of the heroic work of Florence Nightingale and later in life, Linda not only was befriended by “the angel of Crimea,” and trained in a hospital Nightingale established.

Richards began her career in Boston City hospital, bu soon left because she was disappointed to find that what she had expected to b a thorough preparation for nursing was, in large part, assignments of washing dishes, cleaning hospital wards and washing poultice cloths in patient’s bathtubs

From Boston City hospital, she went to New England hospital for Women and Children of the same city. Entering with a class of five in 1872, she earned a diploma the next year. During training, nurses arose at 5:30 a.m. and retired at 9 p.m. Their rooms were between the hospital wards and they were responsible for the care of the patients at night, often having to get up several times to attend to their patients’ needs.

According to a tribute, published in the Burlington, Vermont, Daily News in the April 23, 1930 edition on page 4, “Linda graduated from the New England hospital training school in 1873, and was flooded with offers of positions. She accepted that as night superintendent of Bellevue hospital, New York City.

One night, on changing shifts, Linda left some notes for a nurse. A doctor, reading her notes the next day, was quite pleased with the idea and this led to the custom of keeping written records and orders in hospitals.

From Bellevue Hospital, Miss Richards went to Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital, where infant nurses training school of one year’s existence was standing on very uncertain props with a hospital staff unfavorable to it.

She found nurses assigned to the same dull routine with dish washing and dining room work, washing poultice cloths and, between times, serving as head nurse.

Richards organized classes there and soon had the school on a firm foundation, favorably received by the public in the days when more doctors opposed trained nursing than were in favor of it.

Early in the history of nursing, all training was provided in schools affiliated with hospitals. Students were unmarried, female and lived in housing adjacent to the hospital. In essence, students provided free labor for hospitals, working 12-18 hours each day, 6-7 days each week. These Diploma Nursing students learned everything hands-on with few classroom lectures.

These hospital-based nurse training programs evolved into courses that took longer to complete. By the late 1900s, hospital diploma programs took three years to finish. The early graduates started writing nursing textbooks which paved the way for specialty training.

By the 1960s, diploma programs were the major providers of RN graduates. In the ‘50s and ‘60s. there were more than 1,300 diploma schools in the U.S. In Texas, most of the larger hospitals were affiliated with these schools.

The decline of these schools began in the late 1970s when nursing education shifted from apprentice-type learning to instruction type at colleges and universities.

After completing her training, Richards immediately began filling important and responsible positions in hospitals where she worked as well as those she founded, in the U.S. and abroad.

“She founded a school for nurses in Japan, the first hospital to be established in other parts of the world by a missionary organization. Other schools soon resulted from Richards’ work.

It is impossible to estimate the impact of this visionary nurse. When she entered the newly-founded nursing profession, it was definitely not the noble calling it now is. Scientific principles were unknown and recovery from serious illness or an operation was more or less a miracle.

Linda Richards has left the noble work which she started, but the impetus which she gave it will go on for all time to come. It is inspiring to contemplate the work of such women. Happy Nurses Week.