Isabel Hampton Robb

Isabel Hampton Robb
Born	August 26, 1859 Welland, Ontario
Died	April 15, 1910 Cleveland, Ohio
Cause of death	Streetcar Accident
Education	Bellevue Training School for Nurses
Occupation(s)	Superintendent of Nurses and Principal of the Training School
Years active	1889-1894
Medical career
Field	Nursing
Institutions	Johns Hopkins Hospital, Nurses' Associated Alumnae of the US and Canada
Awards	American Nurses Association Hall of Fame Inductee, NSNA Isabel Hampton Robb Leadership Award

Isabel Adams Hampton Robb (1860–1910) was an American nurse theorist, author, nursing school administrator and early leader. Hampton was the first Superintendent of Nurses at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, wrote several influential textbooks, and helped to found the organizations that became known as the National League for Nursing, the International Council of Nurses, and the American Nurses Association. Hampton also played a large role in advancing the social status of nursing through her work in developing a curriculum of more advanced training during her time at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing.

Early life and career

Isabel Hampton was born in Welland, Ontario on August 26, 1859. Hampton started early her teaching profession at the early age of 17 at a public school in Merritton, Ontario. She attended a collegiate institution after high school, but a significant part of her early education was attained through independent study. Hampton enrolled in the Bellevue Hospital Training School for Nurses in 1881 and graduated in 1883. After graduation, she briefly worked as a nurse in New York and later went to work in Rome at St. Paul's House. Here, she worked for a hospital that served American and European travelers. Upon returning the United States, she worked as a private duty nurse for the Conover family in New Jersey. In 1886, Hampton went to Chicago and assumed the role of superintendent of Illinois Training School for Nurses at the Cook County Hospital. During her time in Chicago, she implemented reforms, many of which are still followed today. One of her most notable contributions to the system of nursing education was the implementation of a grading policy for nursing students. Students would need to prove their competency in order to receive qualifications. Before Hampton's reforms, nursing had been largely taken up by lower-class women who were unable to hold other jobs.

Career at Johns Hopkins

In 1889, Hampton was appointed the Superintendent of Nurses and Principal of the Training School new Johns Hopkins School of Nursing. She continued to suggest reforms, participate in teaching, and publish textbooks. Because of Hampton's strong leadership and educational background, the chairman of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, William Osler, commented during the interviewing process: "Miss Isabel Hampton entered the room looking like an animated Greek statue...we knew that all was settled...Her certificates were looked at...and all was settled in a few minutes." Hampton wrote Nursing: Its Principles and Practice. The textbook was published in 1893 and, as a review of the second edition of the textbook that appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association stated, the textbook "stands without a competitor." This text was not only unique, but critical to a better understanding of nursing as a whole because it included in depth analyses of topics including: outline for a 3-year long nursing curriculum, economics of hospital wards, proper hygiene protocol in hospitals, and protocol for bacteriological notes and proper bed making. Such comprehensive detail in one foundational text allowed nursing to become both well-structured and respected as crucial branch of the medical field, as importance in the hospital setting had finally been established.

In 1893 at the World's Fair in Chicago, Hampton organized the Nurses section of the International Congress of Charities, Correction and Philanthropy. This laid the foundation for Hampton and Lavinia Dock to found the American Society of Superintendents of Training Schools for Nurses of the United States and Canada, a precursor to the current National League for Nursing. .Hampton would later serve as the president to this organization.

In 1894, Hampton left Johns Hopkins to marry Dr. Hunter Robb, who was an obstetrician/gynecologist at Johns Hopkins. Hampton eventually stated that she had shown so much interest in Johns Hopkins was because the institution "would be the first in this country to have a primary interest in education, research, and health care."

This book was one of the first texts to be written on nursing in America. It was crucial in establishing nursing as a legitimate and necessary profession in the medical field.
Author	Isabel Hampton Robb
Original title	Nursing: Its Principles and Practice
Subject	Nursing
Genre	Medicine
Set in	United States of America
Publication date	1909

Later life and career

After Hampton and Robb married, they moved to Ohio, where Dr. Hunter Robb had a new position as professor of gynecology at Case Western Reserve University. Isabel and her husband would have two children, in 1895 and 1902 respectively.

In 1896, Hampton became the first President of the American of the Nurses' Associated Alumnae of the United States and Canada, which has since become the American Nurses Association. Hampton also played roles in both establishing the American Journal of Nurses and a course on Hospital Economics at the Teachers College, Columbia University in 1899.

She was a key figure in the development for curriculum for the Lakeside Hospital Training School for Nurses, the nucleus for Case Western's future School of Nursing. Lakeside's program became one of the first schools to implement the teachings of Florence Nightingale.

Hampton also authored Nursing Ethics in 1900 and Educational Standards for Nurses in 1907. In a 1901 review of Nursing Ethics, the Baltimore American said, "This text-book differs from any other on the market at the present time, in that it deals simply with the principles and practice of nursing, and omits the usual smattering of teaching on a great variety of subjects. The author particularly insists that for thorough training in nursing it is necessary that each nurse should be supplied with various additional books, each dealing with a single subject, such as anatomy, physiology, materia medica, massage, bandaging and invalid cookery, which are quite distinct from, although supplementary to, the principles of nursing." Hampton died on April 15, 1910 following an accident involving a streetcar.

Further impacts on nursing

Hampton continued to serve as a leader in nursing both nationally and internationally through her writing and nursing organizations. Hampton was among the group that established the American Journal of Nursing. She was also a founding member of the International Council of Nurses as well as the first president of the Nurses' Associated Alumnae of the United States and Canada. The latter organization would later become the American Nurses Association. She also helped to create a graduate hospital economics course at Columbia University Teachers College.

Awards and honors

1976: Inductee, American Nurses Association Hall of Fame

Works

• Hampton, Isabel Adams (1894). Nursing: Its Principles and Practice for Hospital and Private Use. W.B. Saunders. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Robb, Isabel Hampton (1900). Nursing Ethics. Cleveland: E.C. Koeckert. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Robb, Isabel Hampton (1907). Educational Standards for Nurses. Cleveland: E.C. Koeckert. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)

See also

• History of nursing in the United States

Further reading

• Gilfether C. The age of nursing. CWRU Magazine - Fall 1998.
• James, Janet Wilson. "Isabel Hampton and the Professionalization of Nursing in the 1890s," in Morris J. Vogel and Charles E. Rosenberg, eds. Therapeutic Revolution: Essays in the Social History of American Medicine (1979) pp 201–244
• Kaufman M et al. Dictionary of American medical biography. Greenwood Press, Westport CN, vol 2. Page 640.
• Ramos, Mary Carol. "The Johns Hopkins Training School For Nurses: A Tale Of Vision, Labor, And Futility," Nursing History Review (1997), Vol. 5, pp 23–48.

External links

• "The Isabel Hampton Robb Collection" at The Alan Mason Chesney Medical Archives of The Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions