Jane Delano - Professional Life

Professional Life

She started work in 1888 at a Jacksonville, Florida hospital treating victims of a yellow fever epidemic. There, she demonstrated her superior executive and administrative skills and developed innovative nursing procedures for the patients under her care. Leaving Florida, Jane Delano then spent three years nursing typhoid patients at a copper mine in Bisbee, Arizona until accepting an appointment as the Superintendent of Nurses at University Hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

In 1898, during the Spanish-American War, Jane Delano became a member of the New York Chapter of the American Red Cross and served as the secretary for the enrollment of nurses. In 1902 she returned to Bellevue Hospital in New York City as the director of the Training School for Nurses where she remained until 1909 when she was made Superintendent of the United States Army Nurse Corps. During this time, her invaluable contributions to her profession resulted in her being named president of the American Nurses Association and chair of the National Committee of the Red Cross Nursing Service.

A leading pioneer of the modern nursing profession, Delano almost single-handedly created American Red Cross Nursing when she united the work of the American Nurses Association, the Army Nurse Corps, and the American Red Cross. Through her efforts, emergency response teams were organized for disaster relief and over 8,000 registered nurses were trained and ready for duty by the time the United States entered World War I. During the course of the War, more than 20,000 of her nurses played vital roles with the United States military.