Sadie
Heath Cabaniss
1865-1921
Johns Hopkins Hospital School of Nursing,
Baltimore, Maryland, 1893
- Founder, Charter Member and First President of the Virginia State Association of Nurses (now the Virginia Nurses Association)
- First President and original member of the Virginia State Board of Examiners of Nurses
- Founder of the Nurses Settlement, forerunner of the Instructive Visiting Nurses Association
- Organized the Old Dominion Training School for Nurses in the Nightingale method
Sadie Heath Cabaniss laid the foundation for professional nursing in Virginia. Cabaniss, who held leadership positions in both state and national nursing organizations, led the movement to secure licensing registration for Virginia nurses in 1903. As superintendent of the Old Dominion Training School, Cabaniss molded Virginia's first generation of professional nurses. Her devotion to the cause of public health led her to develop a nurses settlement in Richmond, Virginia and St. Augustine, Florida. She also established the first rural health visiting nurse service in Virginia for Hanover, County.
"It is fortunate indeed for the nursing profession of Virginia that the pioneer in our State was a lady, of rare intelligence, who possessed a character of such outstanding force as to impress itself on the profession not only then but for years to come, who inspired in her pupils a realization of the nobility of their calling, who emphasized the necessity of intelligence and systematic education to insure the best results and who dedicated her own life to laying the foundation for nursing education in our state."
Charles R. Robins, February 15, 1929
