This is a timeline of nursing history.

• 1568 - In Spain. The founding of the Obregones Nurses "Poor Nurses Brothers" by Bernardino de Obregón / 1540-1599. Reformer of spanish nursing during Felipe II reign. Nurses Obregones expand a new method of nursing cares and printed in 1617 "Instrucción de Enfermeros" ("Instruction for nurses"), the first known handbook written by a nurse Andrés Fernández, Nurse obregón and for training nurses.

• 1633 – The founding of the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul, Servants of the Sick Poor by Sts. Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac. The community would not remain in a convent, but would nurse the poor in their homes, "having no monastery but the homes of the sick, their cell a hired room, their chapel the parish church, their enclosure the streets of the city or wards of the hospital." [1]

• 1645 – Jeanne Mance establishes North America's first hospital, l'Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal.

• 1654 and 1656 – Sisters of Charity care for the wounded on the battlefields at Sedan and Arras in France. [2]

• 1660 – Over 40 houses of the Sisters of Charity exist in France and several in other countries; the sick poor are helped in their own dwellings in 26 parishes in Paris.

• 1755 – Rabia Choraya, head nurse or matron in the Moroccan Army. She traveled with Braddock’s army during the French & Indian War. She was the highest-paid and most respected woman in the army.

• 1783 – James Derham, a slave from New Orleans, buys his freedom with money earned working as a nurse. [3]

• 1836 Nursing Society of Philadelphia
• 1850 instructional school for nurses opened by NSP
• 1853 Crimean war
• 1854 Nightingale appointed as the Superintendent of Nursing Staff
• 1855 Nightingale Fund established
• 1861–1865 The Civil war, American Army nurses corps
• 1872, 73 formal nursing training programs were established, establishment of formal education

• c. 1820 – Jensey Snow, a former slave, opens a hospital in Petersburg, Virginia. [4]

• 1844 – Dorothea Dix testifies to the New Jersey legislature regarding the state's poor treatment of patients with mental illness.

• 1844 - Florence Nightingale travels to Kaiserworth, Germany to start to learn nursing from the Institution of Deaconesses. She stayed for three months.

• 1850 – Florence Nightingale, a pioneer of modern nursing, begins her training as a nurse at the Institute of St. Vincent de Paul at Alexandria, Egypt [5]
• 1853 – Florence Nightingale visits the Daughters of Charity in their Motherhouse in Paris to learn their methods. [6]
• 1854 – Florence Nightingale and 38 volunteer nurses are sent to Turkey on October 21 to assist with caring for the injured of the Crimean War.
• 1855 – Mary Seacole leaves London on January 31 to establish a "British Hotel" at Balaklava in the Crimea.
• 1856 – Biddy Mason is granted her freedom and moves to Los Angeles. She works as a nurse and midwife and becomes a successful businesswoman.
• 1857 – Ellen Ranyard creates the first group of paid social workers in England and pioneers the first district nursing programme in London. [7]

• 1860 – Florence Nightingale's Notes on Nursing: What it is and What it is Not is published.
• 1861 – Sally Louisa Tompkins opens a hospital for Confederate soldiers in July. She is later made an officer in the army, the only woman to receive that honor.
• 1867 – Jane Currie Blaikie Hoge publishes her memoirs of nursing in the Union Army, The Boys in Blue.

• 1873 – Linda Richards is graduated from the New England Hospital for Women and Children Training School for Nurses and officially becomes America's First Trained Nurse.
• 1873 – The nation's first nursing school, based on Florence Nightingale's principles of nursing, opens at Bellevue Hospital, New York City
• 1876 – The Japanese term ("Kangofu" or nurse) is used for the first time. [8]
• 1879 – Mary Eliza Mahoney is graduated from the New England Hospital for Women and Children Training School for Nurses and becomes the first black professional nurse in the U.S. [9]

• 1881 – Clara Barton becomes the first President of the American Red Cross, which she founded, on May. 21
• 1884 – Mary Agnes Snively, the first Ontario nurse trained according to the principles of Florence Nightingale, assumes the position of Lady Superintendent of the Toronto General Hospital’s School of Nursing.
• 1885 – The first nurse training institute is established in Japan, thanks to the pioneering work of Linda Richards. [10]
• 1886 – The Nightingale, the first American nursing journal, is published. [11]
• 1886 – Spelman Seminary establishes the first nursing program in the U.S. specifically for African-Americans. [12]
• 1888 The monthly journal The Trained Nurse begins publication in Buffalo, New York. [13]

• 1890 – Kate Marsden, founder of the St. Francis Leprosy Guild, travels to Yakutia, Siberia in search of a herb reputed to cure leprosy. [14]
• 1891 - The Hampton University School of Nursing began as the Hampton Training School for Nurses in conjunction with The Kings Chapel Hospital for Colored and Indian Boys and the Abbey Mae Infirmary. This school was started on the campus of Hampton Institute at Strawberry Banks in what is now the City of Hampton, Virginia. On this campus sits the Emancipation Oak, the site of the first reading of the Emancipation Proclamation in the South. Alice Bacon was instrumental in starting the Hampton Training School for Nurses. The school was commonly called Dixie Hospital, now know as the Sentara Hampton CarePlex, and its first graduate was Anna DeCosta Banks. Elnora D. Daniel, the first Black nurse to serve as the president of a university [Chicago State University] was Dean of Hampton University School of Nursing in the 1980's. [15]
• 1893 – Lillian Wald, the founder of visiting nursing in the U.S., begins teaching a home class on nursing for Lower East Side (New York) women after a trying time at an orphanage where children were maltreated.
• 1893 – The Nightingale Pledge, composed by Lystra Gretter, is first used by the graduating class at the old Harper Hospital in Detroit, Michigan in the spring.
• 1897 – The American Nurses Association holds its first meeting in February, as the "Associated Alumnae of Trained Nurses of the United States and Canada".
• 1897 – Jane Delano becomes Superintendent of Bellevue Hospital. [16]
• 1899 – Japan establishes a licensing system for modern nursing professionals with the introduction of the "Midwives Ordinance". [17]
• 1899 – Anna E. Turner goes to Cuba on a cattle boat with nine other nurses to serve two years at a yellow fever hospital in Havana. [18]
• 1899 – The International Council of Nurses is formed.

• 1900 – Dame Agnes Gwendoline Hunt, the founder of orthopaedic nursing, opens a convalescent home for crippled children at Florence House in Baschurch which espouses the yet-unproven theory of open-air treatment.
• 1901 – New Zealand is the first country to regulate nurses nationally, with adoption of the Nurses Registration Act on September 12.
• 1902 – Ellen Dougherty of New Zealand becomes the first registered nurse in the world on February 10.
• 1902 – New York City Board of Education hires Lina Rogers Struthers as North America’s first school nurse.
• 1902 – The Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service replaces, by royal warrant, the Army Nursing Service. [19]
• 1906 The first nursing school Union Mission Hospital Training School for Nurses/Iloilo Mission Hospital training school for Nurses]], now Central Philippine University-College of Nursing, is established in the Philippines.
• 1908 The United States Navy Nurse Corps is established.
• 1908 – Representatives of 16 organized nursing bodies meet in Ottawa to form the Canadian National Association of Trained Nurses, which will become the Canadian Nurses Association in 1911. [20]
• 1909 – The American Red Cross Nursing Service is formed. [21]
• 1909 – The University of Minnesota bestows the first bachelors degree in nursing, setting a new standard in the training of nurses.

• 1910 – Florence Nightingale dies.

• 1915 – Edith Cavell is executed by a German firing squad on October 12 for helping hundreds of Allied soldiers escape to the Netherlands.
• 1916 – The Royal College of Nursing is founded.
• 1918 – Lenah Higbee is awarded the Navy Cross for distinguished service in the line of her profession and unusual and conspicuous devotion to duty as superintendent of the U.S. Navy Nurse Corps. She is the first living woman to receive this honor.
• 1918 – Frances Reed Elliot is enrolled as the first African-American in the American Red Cross Nursing Service on July 2. [22]
• 1918 — Viola Pettus, a legendary African-American nurse in Texas, won fame for her courageous care of victims of the Spanish Influenza, including members of the Ku Klux Klan.
• 1919 – The UK passes the Nursing Act of 1919, which provides for registration of nurses, but it will not become effective until 1923. The first name entered in the register as SRN 001 was Ethel Gordon Fenwick. ^{[citation needed]}

• 1921 – Sophie Mannerheim, a pioneer of modern nursing in Finland, accepts the chairmanship of the Finnish Red Cross.
• 1923 – The Nursing Act of 1919 becomes effective and Ethel Gordon Fenwick is the first nurse registered in the UK.
• 1923 – Yale School of Nursing becomes the first autonomous school of nursing in the U.S. with its own dean, faculty, budget, and degree meeting the standards of the University. The curriculum was based on an educational plan rather than on hospital service needs. [23]
• 1923 – Mary Breckinridge, the founder of the Frontier Nursing Service, travels 700 miles on horseback surveying the health needs of rural Kentuckians. [24]
• 1923 – The first Brazilian higher education institution of nursing, named after nursing pioneer Ana Néri, is launched in Rio de Janeiro by Carlos Chagas, aiming at implementing the "Nightingale model" nationwide. [25]
• 1929 – The Japanese Nursing Association is established. [26]

• 1931 – The Forgotten Frontier, a documentary about the Frontier Nursing Service, is filmed.
• 1937 – Sister Elizabeth Kenny publishes her first book, Infantile Paralysis and Cerebral Diplegia: Method of Restoration of Function.
• 1938 – The Nurses Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery is erected in Section 21 (the "Nurses Section") to honor nurses who served in the armed forces during World War I. Over 600 nurses are buried at Arlington. [27]

• 1942 – Banka Island massacre: Twenty one Australian nurses, survivors of a bombed and sunken ship, are executed by bayonet or machine gun by Imperial Japanese Army soldiers on February 16.
• 1943 – Erna Flegel becomes "Hitler's nurse" in January and serves in that capacity until his suicide at the end of World War II. [28]
• 1943 - Mary Elizabeth Lancaster (Carnegie) is appointed the acting director of the Division of Nursing Education at Hampton Institute in Hampton, Virginia. Through her direction the first baccalaureate nursing program in the Commonwealth of Virginia is created ^[1].
• 1944 - The first baccalaureate nursing program in the Commonwealth of Virginia is created at the Hampton University School of Nursing.
• 1948 – The National Health Service is launched on July 5.
• 1949 – Mary Elizabeth Carnegie is the first black person elected to the board of the Florida Nurses Association with the right to speak and vote. [29]

• 1951 – The National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses merges with the American Nurses Association. [30]
• 1951 – Males join the United Kingdom same register of nurses as females for the first time.^{[citation needed]}
• 1951 – [National Association for Practical Nurse Education and Service]NAPNES along with professional nursing organizations and the U.S. Department of Education created Vocational Nursing standards for education and the LPN / LVN level of nursing was created in the United States.
• 1952 – The introduction of sedatives transforms mental health nursing. ^{[citation needed]}
• 1954 – One of the first PhD programs in nursing is offered at the University of Pittsburgh.[31]
• 1955 – Elizabeth Lipford Kent becomes the first African American to earn a PhD in nursing. [32]
• 1956 – The Columbia University School of Nursing is the first in the U.S. to grant a master's degree in a clinical nursing specialty. [33]
• 1957 – A Japanese court rules on the regulation regarding night shifts of nurses, limiting them to 8 days a month and banning single-person night shifts altogether. [34]

• 1960 – The University of Edinburgh initiates the first degree in nursing. ^{[citation needed]}
• 1963 – Ruby Bradley retires from the U.S. Army Nurse Corps with 34 medals and citations for bravery.^{[citation needed]}
• 1965 – The establishment of the first nurse practitioner (NP) role, developed jointly by a nurse educator and a physician at the University of Colorado [35]
• 1966 – The Filipino Nurses Association was renamed as The Philippine Nurses Association
• 1967 – The Salmon Report recommends the reorganisation of the NHS management, ultimately leading to the abolishment of matrons [36].
• 1967 – Termination of pregnancy becomes legal in the United Kingdom under the Abortion Act 1967.
• 1967 – Dame Cicely Saunders sets up the first hospice in a suburb of London. [37]
• 1969 – Dame Cicely Saunders is a guest speaker at Yale University at the invitation of Florence Wald, Dean of Yale School of Nursing.

• 1971 – The hospice movement is established in the United States when Florence Wald and her associates found Hospice, Inc.
• 1976 - The first master's degree program in nursing for a Historically Black College or University (HBCU) is founded at Hampton University School of Nursing.
• 1977 - The M. Elizabeth Carnegie Nursing Archives is created by Dr. Patricia E. Sloan at the Hampton University School of Nursing. This is the only repository for memorabilia on minority nurses in the United States. The focus of the archives is African American nurses.
• 1978 – Estelle Massey Osborne is the first black nurse to be inducted as honorary fellow in the American Academy of Nursing. [38]
• 1978 – Barbara Nichols is the first black nurse to be elected president of the American Nurses Association. [39]
• 1978 – Elizabeth Carnegie is the first black to be elected president of the American Academy of Nursing. [40]
• 1979 – The first iteration of a clinical doctorate, a nursing doctorate (ND), was established at Case Western Reserve University.[41]

• 1980s – In America, the MSN degree became the required degree for advanced practice nurse certification. Nurse Practitioners with certificates were grandfathered in.
• 1980 – The Roper, Logan and Tierney model of nursing, based upon the activities of daily living, is published.
• 1983 – The importance of human rights in nursing is made explicit in a statement adopted by the International Council of Nurses.
• 1983 – UKCC becomes the profession's new regulatory body in the UK.
• 1985 – Miss Virginia Henderson is presented with the first Christianne Reimann Prize by the International Council of Nurses in June. [42]
• 1988 – Anne Casey develops her child-centered nursing model while working as a paediatric oncology nurse in London.

• 1990 – Florence Nightingale's birthday (May 12) is declared the official Nursing Day in Japan. [43]
• 1992 – Eddie Bernice Johnson is the first nurse elected to the U.S. Congress.
• 1999 – Elnora D. Daniel is the first black nurse elected president of a major university, Chicago State University. [44]
• 1999 - The first doctor of philosophy degree program in nursing for a Historically Black College or University (HBCU) is founded at Hampton University School of Nursing. This doctoral program is unique in that it is the only doctoral program in the country that focuses on family and family related nursing research.

• 2002 – The Nursing and Midwifery Council takes over from the UKCC as the UK's regulatory body.
• 2004 – The American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN)[45] recommends that all advanced practice nurses earn a Doctor of Nursing Practice degree.
• 2007 – ICN Conference is held in Yokohama, Japan.
• 2008 - National Council for State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN) issues final report: "NCSBN Consensus Model for APRN Regulation: Licensure, Accreditation, Certification & Education." [46]
• 2009 - Carnegie Foundation releases the results of its study of nursing education, "Educating Nurses: A Call for Radical Transformation". [47]
• 2010 - Institute for the Future of Nursing (IFN) releases evidence-based recommendations to lead change for improved health care. [48]

• Bostridge. Mark. Florence Nightingale: The Making of an Icon (2008)
• Bullough, Vern L. and Bullough, Bonnie. The Care of the Sick: The Emergence of Modern Nursing (1978).
• Campbell, D'Ann. Women at War with America: Private Lives in a Patriotic Era (1984) ch 2, on World War Two
• D'Antonio, Patricia. American Nursing: A History of Knowledge, Authority, and the Meaning of Work (2010), 272pp excerpt and text search
• Dingwall, Robert, Anne Marie Rafferty, Charles Webster. An Introduction to the Social History of Nursing (Routledge, 1988)
• Donahue, M. Patricia. Nursing, The Finest Art: An Illustrated History (3rd ed. 2010), includes over 400 illustrations; 416pp; excerpt and text search
• Judd, Deborah. A History of American Nursing: Trends and Eras (2009) 272pp excerpt and text search
• Kalisch, Philip Arthur, and Beatrice J. Kalisch. The Advance of American Nursing (2nd ed. 1986); retitled as American Nursing: A History (4th ed. 2003), the standard history
• Lewenson, Sandra B., and Eleanor Krohn Herrmann. Capturing Nursing History: A Guide to Historical Methods in Research (2007)
• Reverby, Susan M. Ordered to Care: The Dilemma of American Nursing, 1850-1945 (1987) excerpt and text search
• Sarnecky, Mary T. A history of the U.S. Army Nurse Corps (1999)
• Snodgrass, Mary Ellen. Historical Encyclopedia of Nursing (2004), 354pp; from ancient times to the present
• Sweet, Helen. "Establishing Connections, Restoring Relationships: Exploring the Historiography of Nursing in Britain," Gender and History, Nov 2007, Vol. 19 Issue 3, pp565-580