Famous Nurses Trivia Quiz

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. What nurse that shares a last name with a small passerine bird is perhaps one of the most famous nurses of all times? During the Crimean War she advocated hygiene.

Answer: Florence Nightingale

Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) was a British pioneer during the Crimean War. She witnessed the horrific conditions suffered by the wounded in the hospital on the Bosporus (Asiatic side of present day Istanbul). She was also a mathematician. Also a statistician, her dedication to reducing deaths of the British Army soldiers made some groundbreaking studies on living conditions.

She went blind in 1895. In 1907 she became the first woman to be awarded the Order of Merit.

2. Which volunteer nurse for a Union Hospital during the Civil War was the wife of a United States President? She was born in Lexington, Kentucky but moved to Springfield, Illinois when she married.Her husband wore tall hats and gave a famous speech.

Answer: Mary Todd Lincoln

Mary, wife of President Abraham Lincoln, proved critics wrong by putting in countless hours at the local Union Hospital, cleaning wounds and consoling and feeding soldiers suffering unbearable pain. Even though she was from the South and was torn emotionally, her loyalties were to the Union.

3. Which one of America's most celebrated poets of all time was also a volunteer nurse in Washington, D. C. during the Civil War? This inspired a collection of poems, 'Drumtaps' being one of them and also 'Specimen Days and Collect' and 'O Captain! My Captain!'

Answer: Walt Whitman

Yes, surprise, Walt Whitman (1819-1892) was a volunteer nurse during the Civil War. He had gotten word that his brother George had been injured and was in a hospital in Washington, D.C. Walt made his way there and was glad to see the wounds were not serious. He had been horrified to see the serious injuries of war and so stayed and became a volunteer nurse!

4. Who was the first African-American registered nurse? She graduated from the New England Hospital for Women and Children Training School for Nurses in 1879, and went on to have a very illustrious and outstanding career as a nurse.

Answer: Mary Eliza Mahoney

Mary Eliza Mahoney (1845-1926) was the first African-American trained and registered nurse in the U.S.A. Not only is she known for her personal nursing career, but also for her outstanding contributions to local and national organizations. She was one of only three persons to complete the grueling and rigorous 16 month program at her school.

5. Which English nurse was the head of a nursing school and Red Cross hospital during the German occupation of Belgium during World War I? She had helped over 200 allied soldiers escape from occupied territory and was later arrested and executed.

Answer: Edith Cavell

Edith Louisa Cavell was born on December 4, 1865 in Swardeston, near Norwich, England. At the age of 20 she entered the nursing profession. In 1907 she became the matron of the Berkendael Institute in Brussels. After sheltering British, French and Belgian soldiers at the Institute, from where they were helped to escape to Holland, she was arrested and tried by a court-martial. Cavell made a full confession and was sentenced to death on 7 October.

Her death was widely condemned, and now she is commemorated with a statue of her just off Trafalgar Square in London, England ...

She is buried at Norwich Cathedral.

6. Which nurse was the foremost pioneer in the development of American midwifery and the provision of care to the nation's rural areas as founder of the Frontier Nursing Service. This was begun in 1925 in rural southeastern Kentucky.

Answer: Mary Breckenridge

Breckinridge (1881-1965) was descendant of a distinguished family that included a U.S. vice president and a congressman and diplomat. She lost her first husband and two children to early death. She turned to nursing as an outlet for her energies, committed to "raise the status of childhood everywhere," as a memorial to her own lost children.

She spent time as a public health nurse during World War I, and became convinced that the nurse-midwife concept could help children in rural America. After additional nursing studies and midwifery training, she went to rural Kentucky and began work in 1925.

In 1928 her service was named the Frontier Nursing Service, and was for several years entirely underwritten by her own personal funds.

7. Which nurse was the first African-American woman to achieve the rank of brigadier general in the US Army? She was the 16th chief of the Army Nurse Corps, an organization to which she dedicated 26 years of her life. She also served as Director of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Nursing.

Answer: Hazel W. Johnson-Brown

Hazel W. Johnson (born 1927), became the first black woman general officer on September 1, 1979, when she assumed the position of Chief of the Army Nurse Corps through 31 August 1983. She graduated from Harlem hospital School of Nursing, New York, New York in 1950 and received a B.A. from Villanova University, Villanova, Pennsylvania in 1959.

8. Which nurse was a noted humanitarian, reformer, educator and campaigner? She is perhaps best known for her patient advocacy of the improvement of conditions of jails and mental asylums in North America and Europe. She was 59 years old when she offered her services to the Union Army during the Civil War earning the nickname "Dragon Dix" because she clashed with military officials due to her strict ways.

Answer: Dorothea Lynde Dix

Dorothea Lynde Dix (1807-1887) left a 24-year career as a school teacher and began her second career at the age of 39 when she embarked on a career as a nurse. Dix was not trained as a nurse, but modern nursing did not yet exist. In fact, Dix became one of the modern nursing pioneers, pursuing the core value that drives the provision of all other nursing care: patient advocacy.

9. Which nurse during the Civil War cared for soldiers during the battle of Shiloh and later worked aboard the hospital ship Hazel Dell. She later became the very first female surgeon in America.

Answer: Mary Jane Safford

Mary Safford was born on December 31, 1834, in Hyde Park, Vermont, but grew up in Crete, Illinois. She helped out during the Civil War. She then did a tour of Europe and returned to the United States determined to become a physician. She graduated from the New York Medical College for Women in 1869.

She then pursued furthe, advanced training in Europe for three years and at the University of Breslau (in Germany, now Wroclaw, Poland) she performed an ovariotomy. In 1872 she opened a private practice in Chicago.

10. Which nurse is credited with the founding of the American Red Cross?

Answer: Clara Barton

Clara Barton (December 25, 1821-April 12, 1912), was both famous and honored in her lifetime and has a well-earned place in American history as the angel of Civil War battlefields and founder of the American Red Cross. On May 12, 1881, the American Red Cross was organized, but for years the organization required a continuous battle to keep it alive and functioning. Over the next two decades Barton made the presence of the American Red Cross felt in major emergencies, such as the Galveston hurricanes the outbreak of yellow fever in Jacksonville, Florida.

The Red Cross provided nurses and essential supplies.

Source: Author heavensarrow

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor bloomsby before going online.
Any errors found in FunTrivia content are routinely corrected through our feedback system.

Test your knowledge on these wonderful nurses. You may be surprised just who were nurses and what they contributed to the field.

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