70 Fun Facts About Nursing

Which newspaper's report coined Florence Nightingale's nickname 'The Lady with the Lamp'?

Longfellow's 1857 poem 'Santa Filomena' then fixed the image in the public mind, and a lamp still appears on many nursing school pins.

Nightingale's Scutari hospital, reached in 1854, lies in which modern city?

The hospital sat on the Asian side of the Bosporus, opposite Constantinople; in her first winter there 4,077 British soldiers died, most from disease rather than wounds.

Nightingale's 1859 nursing classic is titled 'Notes on Nursing: What It Is and What It Is ___'?

The whole book runs just 76 pages, and Nightingale insisted in the preface it was meant only to give 'hints for thought' rather than serve as a rulebook.

Where did Nightingale open the first nurse training school on 9 July 1860?

The school was paid for by the Nightingale Fund, a public subscription that had raised £45,000 in gratitude for her Crimean work.

What did Florence Nightingale call her compilation of polar-area charts of Crimean army deaths?

The chart is now known as a polar area diagram or Nightingale rose; the term she coined for the set was later applied to each individual chart.

In 1859 Nightingale became the first woman elected to which learned body?

Her data work impressed statisticians so much that she was later made an honorary member of the American Statistical Association too.

What did Nightingale name the juvenile owl she rescued in Greece and kept as a pet?

The little owl travelled in her pocket and, after it died, was stuffed; it is still displayed at the Florence Nightingale Museum in London.

In 1907 Nightingale became the first woman to receive which British honour?

She was 87 and largely bedridden by then; she died three years later at 90, having declined a state funeral in Westminster Abbey.

In which US city was the Nightingale Pledge written in 1893 by Lystra Gretter and a committee?

It is a modified Hippocratic Oath, and Gretter's 1935 revision added a vow to become a 'missioner of health', widening the nurse's job beyond the bedside.

Which Jamaican-born nurse opened the 'British Hotel' near Balaclava to feed and treat Crimean War officers?

Her 1857 memoir 'Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands' was the first autobiography written by a Black woman in Britain, and in 2004 she topped a poll of 100 Great Black Britons.

Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross, was born on which holiday in 1821?

Before the Civil War she was a teacher and one of the first women to hold a substantial clerkship at the US Patent Office.

After which 1862 battle did Clara Barton earn the nickname 'Angel of the Battlefield'?

After the war she ran the Office of Missing Soldiers in Washington, whose staff answered 41,855 letters and helped locate more than 22,000 missing men.

Union nursing superintendent Dorothea Dix required female volunteers to be 'plain-looking' and within which age range?

Recruits also had to wear plain uniforms with no jewellery or cosmetics; Dix is better remembered for her crusade to build humane asylums for the mentally ill.

Which American poet worked in the army paymaster's office so he could nurse in Civil War hospitals?

He wrote about the wards in 'The Great Army of the Sick' (1863) and later in 'Memoranda During the War'; his 1865 collection 'Drum-Taps' grew from the same years.

Linda Richards, America's first trained nurse, is credited with creating what at New York's Bellevue Hospital?

Her charting system spread to Britain as well; she later trained under Nightingale in England and helped found Japan's first nurse-training programme in 1885.

Who became the first African American professionally trained nurse in the United States, in 1879?

She co-founded the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses in 1908, and the ANA still gives a biennial award in her name for advancing equal opportunity in nursing.

Lillian Wald, who coined 'public health nurse', founded which Lower East Side institution in 1893?

By 1913 the settlement had 92 staff and it eventually became the Visiting Nurse Service of New York; Wald was also first president of the National Organization for Public Health Nursing.

Which theorist, 'the first lady of nursing', defined nursing as assisting the individual 'sick or well'?

She grouped nursing care into 14 components based on human needs, and one biographer called her written work the 20th-century equivalent of Nightingale's.

Nursing theorist Hildegard Peplau is known for a middle-range theory of what?

She built on psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan's work and campaigned for genuinely therapeutic rather than custodial care in state mental hospitals.

Jean Watson's 1979 book is titled 'Nursing: The Philosophy and Science of ___'. What fills the blank?

The Theory of Human Caring is built around ten 'carative' factors, later reworked as Caritas Processes, and draws on Maslow, Carl Rogers and Teilhard de Chardin.

Madeleine Leininger developed which concept, arguing that care must fit a patient's cultural values and 'lifeways'?

Her Culture Care theory, first published in 1961, is often taught with her 'Sunrise' model diagram of the factors that shape a patient's care.

Patricia Benner's 1984 book 'From Novice to Expert' applied whose skill-acquisition framework to nursing?

The result was a five-stage path from novice to expert; a 1989 revision with Judith Wrubel folded in the philosophy of Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty.

Why does US National Nurses Week end on May 12?

The ANA fixed the dates permanently in 1993 after first declaring May 6 National Nurses Day in 1982; May 8 within the week is National Student Nurses Day.

Which US president issued the 1974 proclamation designating a National Nurse Week?

The idea had been floated as early as 1953, when Dorothy Sutherland of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare proposed a 'Nurse Day' to President Eisenhower, who did not approve it.

In which year did the International Council of Nurses fix 12 May as the date for International Nurses Day?

Founded in 1899, the ICN was the first international organisation for health professionals and is headquartered in Geneva.

The ANA traces its origins to 1896. Under what name was it first organised?

Plans were drawn up at the Manhattan Beach Hotel near New York City; the body took the name American Nurses Association in 1911 and is now based in Silver Spring, Maryland.

In which year did the NCLEX switch from paper-and-pencil to a computerized adaptive testing format?

The exam is owned by the National Council of State Boards of Nursing and now delivered by Pearson VUE; the computer picks each question based on how you answered the last one.

Roughly how many RNs were employed in the US as of 2023, its largest healthcare occupation?

Their median pay was $86,070, and the World Health Organization still projects a worldwide shortfall of 4.5 million nurses by 2030.

Which profession topped Gallup's 2001 honesty poll, the only non-nurse winner 1999-2025?

The exception came in the poll taken after the 9/11 attacks; in the December 2025 survey 75% of Americans rated nurses' ethics 'very high' or 'high'.

Around how many anesthetics did Alice Magaw give at St. Mary's Hospital, Rochester, without a single death?

In 1899 she became the first nurse anesthetist ever published, with 'Observations in Anesthesia' in the Northwestern Lancet; her secret was open-drop ether combined with talking patients calm.

Which nurse founded the body now called the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists in 1931?

Nurses have given anesthesia in America since the Civil War; today CRNAs make up about half of all US anesthesia providers and most of those in rural areas.

Which agency supervised the US Cadet Nurse Corps, created in 1943 to ease the wartime nursing shortage?

The law creating it specifically banned discrimination based on race, colour or creed, and registered nurse Lucile Petry was appointed to run the programme.

In which year were Army Nurse Corps nurses first commissioned as Regular Army officers?

Dita H. Kinney was the first superintendent in 1901; the corps admitted no men until the Korean War era.

The first US Navy Nurse Corps members, appointed in 1908, became known by what nickname?

The Navy gave them no room or board, so the women rented their own house in Washington and cooked their own meals; the corps stayed all-female until 1965.

On what date in 1945 did the Surgeon General open the Army Nurse Corps to all applicants regardless of race?

The Army had capped Black nurses at 56 while planning to draft white women; Staupers publicly challenged Surgeon General Norman Kirk at a New York hotel and won Eleanor Roosevelt's backing.

On which day was the Vietnam Women's Memorial dedicated on the National Mall in 1993?

Sculptor Glenna Goodacre's bronze shows three uniformed women with a wounded soldier; former Army nurse Diane Carlson Evans spent nine years lobbying for it.

Edith Cavell was executed in 1915 for helping roughly how many Allied soldiers escape occupied Belgium?

The night before she died she said 'Patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone', words now carved on her memorial near Trafalgar Square.

What everyday object did René Laennec notice amplified heart sounds, inspiring the stethoscope in 1816?

He was reluctant to press his ear to a woman's chest; the first version was a single wooden tube, and the two-eared binaural design did not arrive until Arthur Leared's in 1851.

Which Italian physician introduced the cuff-style sphygmomanometer in 1896?

Diastolic readings only became possible in 1905, when Russian physician Nikolai Korotkov described the sounds heard through a stethoscope as the cuff deflates.

Before Allbutt's 1866 five-minute clinical thermometer, earlier models needed roughly how many minutes?

Earlier instruments were also around a foot long; the first physician to use thermometer readings in clinical practice at all was Herman Boerhaave in the early 1700s.

Thomas Latta's 1831 intravenous fluid experiments, the first success with IV therapy, targeted which disease?

Almost two centuries earlier Christopher Wren had injected wine and ale into a dog's vein 'till I have made him extremely drunk'; the dog survived and was later stolen.

Bjørn Ibsen set up the world's first intensive care unit in 1953 during a polio epidemic in which city?

Patients needed round-the-clock hand ventilation; the traditional open 'Nightingale ward' of 24 to 34 beds had made observation easy for a century, but the ICU took it to a new level.

What is the world's first purpose-built hospice, opened in London by Cicely Saunders in 1967, called?

The idea germinated with a £500 bequest from a dying Polish refugee she had fallen in love with, 'to be a window in your home'; a plain sheet of glass at the entrance still marks it.

Nurses' caps all but disappeared from US hospitals by the late 1980s with the adoption of what?

The cap descended from the head coverings of early Christian deaconesses and the nun's habit; some schools still hold a capping ceremony before students begin clinicals.

The nursing pin descends from which symbol used by the Knights Hospitaller?

The Hospitallers ran some of the earliest hospitals for leprosy and other chronic disease; many modern pins swap the cross for a school seal or an oil lamp.

In 16th-century UK voluntary hospitals, the title 'matron' was first used for what role?

Nightingale's reforms put nursing staff, nurse training and hospital housekeeping all under one senior nurse; the title was revived in the NHS as 'modern matron' in 2001.

At which fictional New York hospital does Edie Falco's 'Nurse Jackie' work?

The show ran from 2009 to 2015 and earned 24 Emmy nominations; Falco won Lead Actress in a Comedy in 2010 and Merritt Wever took Supporting Actress in 2013.

Who won the Best Actress Oscar for playing Nurse Ratched in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"?

All three of the other names turned the part down first; Ken Kesey based the character on the head nurse of the psychiatric ward where he had worked, and the AFI ranks her the fifth-greatest film villain ever.

'Call the Midwife' follows the midwives of Nonnatus House in which East London district?

The real order behind the show, the Community of St. John the Divine, was founded as an Anglican nursing order in 1849; the first series is set in 1957.

Which actress played Major Margaret 'Hot Lips' Houlihan for all eleven seasons of M*A*S*H?

She and Alan Alda were the only two cast members to appear in both the 1972 pilot and the 1983 finale; Sally Kellerman had played the role in the 1970 film.

The 1857 memoir of the Crimean War 'doctress' from Kingston was the first what?

Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands even includes chapters on the food she served.

Where was a controversial statue of the Jamaican-born Crimean nurse unveiled in 2016?

Some Nightingale supporters objected to placing her at the entrance of Nightingale's own hospital.

What were the famous last words of the British matron shot by the Germans in Brussels in 1915?

She was reburied at Norwich Cathedral after a state funeral at Westminster Abbey in 1919.

Virginia Henderson organised nursing care around how many fundamental human needs?

She received the inaugural Christiane Reimann Prize, nursing's most prestigious award, in 1985.

Which country was the first to register nurses nationally, in 1901?

Ellen Dougherty became the world's first registered nurse under the Nurses Registration Act.

Which Harvard professor designed the lighter 1960s stethoscope that still bears his name?

Cammann had perfected the two-earpiece design for commercial production in 1852.

What are the four primary vital signs?

Pain and oxygen saturation are sometimes called the fifth and sixth vital signs.

Who is described in the Bible's Letter to the Romans and often called the first visiting nurse?

Paul sent the deaconess Phoebe to Rome; in the early 7th century Rufaida Al-Aslamia became the first Muslim nurse.

A black stripe on a nursing cap traditionally signified what?

Bellevue adopted a school cap around 1874, and each school's cap identified where a nurse had trained.

Why did hospitals abandon white surgical clothing in the 1950s and 60s?

By the 1970s the short-sleeved V-neck and drawstring pants had become the standard scrubs.

What are scrubs sometimes called in the United Kingdom?

The blue or dark green colours minimise afterimages for anyone looking away from a bright operating field.

Nightingale's 1858 study of British soldier mortality in the Crimea is a seminal work in which field?

She showed most deaths came from disease and poor conditions rather than wounds.

Which body, founded in 1908 because the main nursing organisation excluded Black members, merged into the ANA in 1951?

It merged into the American Nurses Association in 1951; Mahoney entered the ANA Hall of Fame in 1976.

Nightingale was named after her birthplace. Her older sister Parthenope was named after what?

The family was on a European tour when both girls were born and returned to England in 1821.

What nickname did troops give Nightingale for breaking into locked medicine stores?

War correspondent William Russell thought it unladylike and substituted the lamp instead.

How much money did the Nightingale Fund give her to set up the first nursing school?

Sidney Herbert was the fund's honorary secretary; the school is now part of King's College London.

Of which decoration did Nightingale become the first recipient, in 1883?

She later became a Lady of Grace of the Order of St John and, in 1908, an Honorary Freeman of the City of London.

Nightingale's relatives declined a burial where, choosing a Hampshire churchyard instead?

Her grave at East Wellow bears only her initials and dates; she died in her sleep in Mayfair in 1910, aged 90.

On which Bank of England banknote did Nightingale appear from 1975 to 1994?

Before 2002 she was the only woman other than female monarchs ever to feature on an English note.

According to the WHO's 2020 report, roughly what share of the world's nursing workforce is female?

In Canada and the US the male-to-female ratio is about 1:19, though several Francophone African countries have more male than female nurses.