130 Years of Impact

Johns Hopkins School of Nursing continues to lead

Johns Hopkins understood the impact that nurses could have—needed to have—on the health of Baltimore 130-plus years ago when he ordered the creation of a school for nurses alongside his namesake hospital. Nursing care was rudimentary then. Without a cadre of nurses trained to be more than they had ever been before, he realized, Johns Hopkins Hospital could become one more warehouse for the sick. He demanded that it do more: Provide top care to all those who came through its doors but, more important, keep its community healthy enough to avoid hospitalization in the first place. Nurses would be the key. The impact of his decision was immediate, immense, and has since only grown as nurses realize and embrace their impact on business, politics, ethics, and global reach.

Opened with the hospital in 1889, the Johns Hopkins Hospital Training School for Nurses quickly established what would become the national model for nursing education and leadership through the strength, discipline, and resilience of women like Isabel Hampton Robb, Adelaide Nutting, Elsie Lawler, Anna D. Wolf, and so many who followed in their footsteps. These were leaders who realized that to establish equal footing on health care teams, nurses needed to be prepared to practice to the full extent of their licenses, to brave great dangers in service to sick patients, to innovate where caregiving precedent had yet to be established, to be the face and caring hand of medical institutions across the United States and the globe.

Today, the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing is recognized by U.S. News & World Report as the No. 1 graduate school of nursing in the land. And as it marks its 130th year of sculpting leaders, the school also celebrates the foresight of its benefactor and each of the nursing leaders who at every step and with every breakthrough have marked a path to the future of nursing.

These pages capture only a sampling of a story that is still being written.

More mementos and milestones are gathered on a brand new website: hopkinsnursing130.org