American nursing leaders: a comparative study of achievement

Biographies of 177 American nursing leaders who were born before 1890 or deceased by 1988 were analyzed to identify commonalities in their backgrounds. The sample included the dominant figures in American nursing between 1870 and about 1940. Members of the group tended to be well educated. A significant minority were teachers before they became nurses. They tended to be from the Eastern Seaboard, and their higher education was very likely to have been at Columbia University Teachers College. When the backgrounds of these nursing achievers were compared with the backgrounds of significant achievers of Renaissance Italy, 18th-century Scotland, and a group of 19th-century German Jews, similarities in background characteristics were found. Members of all three samples were well educated for their era, they tended to come from middle- or upper-middle-class families, and all of the groups were marked by longevity.