Medical workers stand outside NYU Langone Health hospital as people applaud to show their gratitude to medical staff and essential workers during the coronavirus pandemic on May 19, 2020.
in New York City. (Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images) According to National Day Calendar, the troops affectionately dubbed her "The Lady with the Lamp," but history remembers her as the founder of modern nursing.In 1953, Dorothy Sutherland, who worked at the Department of Health, penned a letter to President Dwight Eisenhower calling for a National Nurses Day.
Ike never made the proclamation, but that didn’t stop people from celebrating on their own the next year in October.Over the following three decades, advocates fought to give nurses national.