Lillian Wald - Nursing Career

Nursing Career

In 1893 after a period of working at the New York Juvenile Asylum–an orphanage where children were kept and conditions were poor–Wald started to teach a home class on nursing for poor immigrant families on the Lower East Side (New York). Not long after, she began to care for sick residents of the Lower East Side as a visiting nurse. Along with another nurse, Mary Brewster, she moved into a spartan room near her patients, in order to care for them better. In 1893 she also coined the term "public health nurse" to describe nurses whose work is integrated into the public community.

Wald extended this mission as founder of the Henry Street Settlement which later attracted the attention of Jacob Schiff, a prominent Jewish philanthropist who secretly provided her the means to help more effectively the "poor Russian Jews" whose care she provided. She was able to expand her work later, having 27 nurses on staff by 1906, and succeeded in attracting broader financial support from such gentiles as Elizabeth Milbank Anderson. By 1913 the staff had grown to 92 people. Wald worked in this area for 40 years.

Wald authored two books relating to this work, the first being The House on Henry Street, first published in 1911, followed by Windows on Henry Street in 1934. Both books went through numerous printings; modern reprints are available in both hard and paperback editions. Today, Lillian Wald is regarded as the founder of visiting nursing in the United States and Canada.

The Henry Street Settlement eventually expanded into the Visiting Nurse Service of New York. As an advocate for nursing in public schools her ideas led to the New York Board of Health's organizing and running the first public nursing system in the world. She was the first president of the National Organization for Public Health Nursing. Wald established a nursing insurance partnership with Metropolitan Life Insurance Company that became a model for many other corporate projects, suggested a national health insurance plan, and helped found Columbia University’s School of Nursing.