Virginia Henderson graduated from the Army School of Nursing, Washington, D.C., in 1921. She is part of the "Columbia school" of nursing theory, having graduated from Teachers College, Columbia University, with a M.A. degree in nursing education, and having been a member of the faculty from 1930 to 1948. She wrote and/or edited several editions of the The Principles and Practice of Nursing, along with Harmer in the early years of the fundamentals text and Nite in the later years.
Virginia Henderson defined nursing as "assisting individuals to gain independence in relation to the performance of activities contributing to health or its recovery" (Henderson, 1966, p. 15).
She categorized nursing activities into 14 components, based on human needs. She described the nurse's role as substitutive (doing for the person), supplementary (helping the person), or complementary (working with the person), with the goal of helping the person become as independent as possible.
Her famous definition of nursing was one of the first statements clearly delineating nursing from medicine:
"The unique function of the nurs is to assist the individual, sick or well, in the performance of those activities contributing to health or its recovery (or to peaceful death) that he would perform unaided if he had the necessary strength, will or knowledge. And to do this in such a way as to help him gain independence as rapidly as possible" (Henderson, 1966, p. 15). She was one of the first nurses to point out that nursing does not consist of merely following physician's orders.
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