Mary Grant Seacole: the first nurse practitioner

Mary Grant Seacole was born in 1805, in Kingston, Jamaica, to a Jamaican doctress (medicine woman) and a Scottish naval officer. Later Seacole became a doctress, nursing British soldiers during epidemics of cholera, dysentery, and yellow fever in Jamaica, Cuba, and Panama. After refusals by both the British government and Florence Nightingale to be allowed to practice in Scutari, she financed her own way to the scene of the Crimean War and then established the British Hotel to serve both the comfort and medical needs of the wounded soldiers. At night, Seacole worked side by side with Nightingale at Scutari as a volunteer nurse. Seacole's fame grew proportionately after she was seen helping wounded soldiers on the battlefields even while the battles were still raging. Seacole died on May 14, 1881, in London. One hundred years later, many members of the London black community, a few members of the Nurses Association of Jamaica and the Friends of Mary Seacole marched to her grave, honoring her as one of the greatest women of all times. Mary Grant Seacole rose above the barriers of racial prejudice and demonstrated the determinism, compassion, and caring that have became the hallmark of nurse practitioners.