The First Registered Nurse In The United States: Josephine (Bradham) Burton

For over a hundred years the story and even the name of the first registered nurse (RN) in the United States has been inaccurately reported and shrouded in mystery. Nurse Mary Rose Batterham went to her grave in 1927, 24 years after she registered her nursing credentials with the Buncombe County Clerk of Court, mistakenly believing and widely honored as the first RN in the United States. Meanwhile Josephine (Bradham) Burton, who was most likely truly the nation’s first registered nurse, probably never knew she deserved that accolade

Brief History Of School Nursing In North Carolina

Within a decade of Lina Rogers Struthers becoming the first school nurse in the United States in 1902 in New York City, Percy Powers of Winston-Salem became the first school nurse in North Carolina. In 1911, the Wayside Workers of the Home Moravian Church, hired nurse Powers to do health inspection and follow-up work among the school children of East and West Salem schools. She measured height and weight, and screened for vision, dental problems, swollen tonsils and adenoids, and malnutrition. She also taught students and parents basic sanitation, nutrition and hygiene to prevent and control the spread of disease. On May 1, 1915, the NC State Board of Health organized the Medical Inspection of School Unit. Surveys of North Carolina schoolchildren revealed that 80% needed dental treatment , 10% had diseased throats, 5% had defective vision and/or hearing, and numerous others suffered from tuberculosis, malaria, hookworm, and malnutrition. The alarming results moved the state legislature to fund six full-time nurses to travel across the state and provide screening and follow-up services at three-year intervals for all students under the seventh grade, regardless of race

Margaret Dolan -- National Nursing Leader

Margaret Baggett Dolan was the fifth of nine children born to John and Allene Keeter Baggett on March 17, 1914, in Lillington, North Carolina. She graduated from Georgetown Hospital School of Nursing in 1935. Dolan began her career in community health working for health departments in Washington, DC, Baltimore, Maryland, and Greensboro. In 1944 she earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Public Health Nursing from UNC-Chapel Hill and in 1953 earned a master's degree from Teachers College, Columbia University, New York City. In 1950, Dolan became a faculty member in the UNC School of Public Health's Public Health Nursing program. She immediately became involved with the North Carolina State Nurse Association and served as its president from 1957-1959

Charlotte Rhone: Nurse, Welfare Worker, And Entrepreneur

Charlotte Rhone, a pioneering African American nurse born in Craven County, North Carolina, at the end of the post–Civil War Reconstruction era, grew up in a society shaped by the harshly discriminatory Jim Crow laws enacted in her home state and in others across the American South. Her choices in education and employment were severely limited because of these racist policies, but Rhone's tenacity, flexibility, and intelligence overcame many obstacles that oppressed poverty-stricken African American women in turn-of-the-century rural North Carolina. She went on to use her education and skills for the good of her community well into the 1950s

Madelon "Glory" Battle Hancock, Heroine Of World War I

2017 marks the 100th anniversary of the United States' entry in World War I (WW1). Few know that Madelon "Glory" Battle Hancock of Asheville, North Carolina, was the most decorated nurse who served with the Allied Forces in WW1. As a British Red Cross nurse, she joined the first detachment of British soldiers deployed to the Belgium battlefront in August, 1914, and remained with the troops until the Armistice was signed on November 11, 1918

Nursing History Council Recaps The First NCNA Convention

This is a brief recap of nurse Mary Lewis Wyche's efforts to create and establish a statewide nursing organization in North Carolina

Appalachia Health Care: The Grace Hospital School Of Nursing

After the Civil War and Recontruction, the South was in chaos. The economy was in a shambles and many social institutions had been destroyed. The task of rebuilding society frequently fell to the churches. Many Protestant denominations sent mission workers, money, and supplies to help "uplift" impoverished communities. Between 1885 and 1895 the Presbyterians organized thirty-one schools in the Appalachian Mountains. In 1885 the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A., home missions board mentioned the mountaineers specifically in its annual report to the General Assembly: Among Presbyterians, religion and knowledge go hand in hand; churches and schools supplement and assist each other .... The Presbyterian Church does not prosper in ignorance or illiteracy. In pushing our missionary work into the South, we have struck another great mass of illiteracy, this time among the whites .... The census tells the story .... These hardy mountaineers are eager for schools .... The first expressed want is an academy-and perhaps they are quite right, for if universal education is to be introduced in their States, as the common school system is in some other states, the first want is the education of their sons and daughters that they may become teachers. Nestled in a picturesque valley in the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina lies the small town of Banner Elk. This once remote Appalachian community is the home of major and ongoing missions of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Three church related institutions - Lees­-McRae College, Grandfather Home and Orphanage, and Grace (now Cannon) Hospital-were established around the turn of the century, primarily through the efforts of the Presbyterian Church, U.S., and the Reverend Edgar Tufts

Russell Eugene Tranbarger: Renaissance Nurse

“If you are going to get involved—get involved. Don’t sit on the sidelines,” says Dr. Russell Eugene Tranbarger. Without question, he has followed his own advice. Educator, clinician, historian, legislative advocate, leader, author, editor, role model, trailblazer, nurse: Tranbarger has worn all of these hats, and more. He started by breaking barriers in nursing and has continued doing so throughout his career, all while making valuable contributions to the profession. As an administrator, Tranbarger has served as president and vice president of several organizations. In the classroom, his endeavors have helped eradicate the stereotype of nursing as an exclusively female profession

Using A Nursing History Web Site With Today's Nursing Students

Recognizing the importance of nursing history, an interdisciplinary team at Appalachian State University created a North Carolina Nursing History Web site (http://nursinghistory.appstate.edu/). The Web site can be used for teaching undergraduate and graduate nursing and other health professions students

North Carolina, Pioneer In American Nursing

On March 3, 1903, before women in the United States had the right to vote or were allowed to hold public office, the state legislature in North Carolina, at the urging of the newly formed North Carolina State Nurses Association (NCSNA), passed the first law in the nation permitting nurses to become licensed. Later that year, New York became the first state to mandate (as opposed to permitting) nursing licensure, a move North Carolina wouldn’t make until 1965. But the 1903 North Carolina law called for the establishment of educational and practice standards for nurses wishing to take the newly created RN examination and to use the title “registered nurse.” On June 4, 1903, Josephine Burton of Craven County became the first RN in North Carolina, and therefore the first in the United States