The region of Western New York State was the site of many nursing “firsts” and the home of nursing visionaries who shaped the profession and its impact on society, health, and the care of those most in need.
Rochester, NY, the birthplace of professional nursing?
Rochester holds many unique places in nursing history. What is today the Genesee Valley Nursing Association was “established in 1900 by thirty nurses from the Rochester School of Nursing, provided a refuge for nurses coming to the city who had no place to stay and is distinguished as being used by the first editorial staff of the American Journal of Nursing, whose editor-in-chief, Sophia Palmer, RN, was from Rochester.”
Rochester was also the site of the meeting of the New York State Nurses Association on October 21, 1902. At this meeting, the Nurse Practice Act was the primary business on the agenda, the main object being to secure a law that would “establish a uniform and definite basis for the practice of nursing…” The keynote speaker at that convention was Susan B. Anthony, an ardent advocate for the professionalism of nursing and the establishment of training standards for all nurses. To learn more details about the Nurse Practice Act and Susan B. Anthony’s role, visit our friends at the Baker-Cederburg Museum and Archives.
The Nurse Practice Act, also known as the Armstrong Act, became law in May 1903, in much the same form and language that it had been proposed at the October 1902 meeting in Rochester. The first nursing license was issued in 1904 to Ida Jane Anderson, class of 1902 from the Rochester Homeopathic Hospital.