Brazilian nursing history on the shoulders of giants

This study describes the route followed by nursing in Brazil, through the foundation of nursing organizations and the emergence of nursing leaders and pioneers.

To present the origins of modern nursing in Brazil, identifying the main nurse-leaders and analysing their performance for the creation and consolidation of the nursing organizations.

It is a historical and social study with descriptive approach, to describe the process of Brazilian nursing professionalization and leadership through a literature review.

The oldest nursing organization is the Brazilian Nursing Association that holds scientific and cultural activities. There are also nurses' unions and nursing specialty associations, such as the Brazilian Academy for the History of Nursing, and the Federal Nursing Council. The latter has compulsory membership for controlling nursing services according to the qualifications of the personnel. The very first school for nurses in the Nightingale system was created in São Paulo, 1894, at the Samaritan Hospital, and by the government in 1923, in Rio de Janeiro, for which American nurses, led by Ethel Parsons, sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation, were essential for the creation of the Anna Nery Nursing School, still in operation within a federal university. Some nurses pioneered these works such as Edith Fraenkel, Maria Rosa Pinheiro, Amalia Carvalho and others.

The work done by nursing leaders has brought to the profession a better status and made it more recognized by the society.