20th century
1900s
- 1900 – Death of Boer War nurse Fanny Hines in Bulawayo.
- c.1900 – The Private Hospital, Wakefield Street in Adelaide becomes the first training hospital for nurses in the colony of South Australia, under Alice Tibbits (1854–1932). [18]
- 1901 – New Zealand is the first country to regulate nurses nationally, with adoption of the Nurses Registration Act
- 1901 – Royal Victorian Trained Nurses' Association is formed. [19]
- 1902 – Ellen Dougherty of New Zealand becomes the first registered nurse in the world on 10 February.
- 1902 – Australian Army Nursing Service formed. [20]
- 1904 – Queen's Memorial Infectious Diseases Hospital opened in Fairfield, initially as a 'fever' hospital. [21]
- 1906 – Sisters of Mercy establish Mater Misericordiae Hospital, North Sydney.
- 1907 – Indigenous woman May Yarrowick receives nursing certificate in Sydney.
- 1907 – First of Karitane hospitals for training neonatal nurses opened in Dunedin.
- 1908 – Ākenehi Hei, of the Whakatohea and Whanau-a-Apanui tribes, was the first Maori registered nurse in New Zealand. [22]
- 1908 – Kai Tiaki, the first New Zealand nursing journal, is published. [23]
- 1909 – A new role called 'backblocks' nursing was introduced to New Zealand providing services to rural parts of the country [24]
- 1909 – Waterfall State Sanatorium opened. [25]
1910s
- 1910 – Ākenehi Hei, the first qualified Maori nurse in New Zealand, dies on 28 November 1910 after contracting typhoid from family members [26] she was nursing.
- 1911 – New South Wales Bush Nursing Association founded. [27]
- 1913 – Eileen O'Connor and Fr Ted McGrath found Our Lady's Nurses for the Poor to look after the Sydney sick poor at home.
- 1914 – First baby health centre established at Alexandria NSW. [28]
- 1914–1918 – Australian and New Zealand nurses serve outside their countries in World War I. [29] 29 Australian nurses die in WWI.
- 1914 – Alice Gordon Elliott and Sister Janet Radcliffe are the first nurses to sail abroad to assist in World War One. [30]
- 1914 – Australian nurses in England join Australian Voluntary Hospital in northern France.
- 1915 – Wounded from Gallipoli treated on Lemnos [31] and at converted Heliopolis Palace Hotel, Cairo; [32] death of Louisa Bicknell.
- 1915 – The New Zealand Army Nursing Service set up in 1915, largely at the urging of Hester Maclean (1863–1932).
- 1915 – 10 New Zealand nurses killed when SS Marquette torpedoed in Aegean Sea.
- 1916 – Group of 20 Bluebirds depart Sydney for Western Front.
- 1916 – Narrelle Hobbes serves on Mesopotamian front. [33]
- 1916 – Hundreds of Australian Army nurses sent to work in India. [34]
- 1917 – Alice Ross-King and three other nurses awarded Military Medal for bravery in hospital bombing, Flanders.
- 1918 – Death of Edith Blake when hospital ship Glenart Castle torpedoed. [35]
- 1919 – Deaths of a number of nurses in the Spanish flu influenza pandemic. [36]
- 1919 – Victorian Government refuses Archbishop Mannix's offer of nuns to nurse Spanish Flu patients. [37]
- 1919 – Opening of Westwood Sanatorium for miner's phthisis and tuberculosis. [38]
1920s
- 1920 – South Australia the first state to set up a Nurses Registration Board. [39]
- 1925 – New Zealand attempts to have a degree nursing programme available at the University of Otago. [40]
1930s
- 1930 – Cecily Maude O'Connell founds Grey Sisters to look after poor mothers and children in Melbourne.
- 1936 – Sr Mary Gertrude establishes Derby Leprosarium. [41]
- 1937 – Four Australian nurses serve in Spanish Civil War, [42] and three from New Zealand including René Shadbolt.
- 1938 – The New Zealand Social Security Act of 1938 marks the introduction of a comprehensive health system that mandated the provision of free care for all. [3]
- 1939 – Registering of nursing aides commenced in New Zealand [43]
- 1939 – St Anne's Guild of Catholic Nurses formed. [44]
- 1939 – Elouera House nurses home opened in Wollongong.
- 1939–1945 – Australian and New Zealand nurses serve outside their countries in World War II. [3]
1940s
- 1940 – Royal Australian Air Force Nursing Service formed.
- 1942 – Banka Island massacre: Twenty-one Australian nurses, survivors of a bombed and sunken ship, are executed by bayonet or machine gun by Imperial Japanese Army soldiers on 16 February, with sole survivor Vivian Bullwinkel.
- 1942 – Royal Australian Naval Nursing Service formed.
- 1943 – 11 Army nurses killed when hospital ship Centaur torpedoed off Queensland.
- 1944–45 – Medical Air Evacuation Transport Units take wounded from New Guinea. [45] [46]
- 1945 – Native Nurses Training Scheme begun in some Queensland aboriginal settlements. [47]
- 1945 – Muriel Knox Doherty works as matron at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp after its liberation.
- 1946 – Rosalind Russell stars in biographical film Sister Kenny , portraying Elizabeth Kenny's treatment for polio.
- 1949 – Formation of the NSW College of Nursing. [3]
- 1949 – Formation of College of Nursing, Australia [48]
1950s
- 1950–1953 – 153 Australian nurses serve in Korean War. [49] [50]
- 1950 – Publication of Scarlet Pillows: An Australian nurse's tales of long ago by Mrs Arthur H. Garnsey (Ann Stafford Bird).
- 1954 – Betty Jeffrey's memoir White Coolies describes her captivity in Sumatra in World War II. [51]
- 1958 – Completion of Napier Waller's stained glass windows in Hall of Memory, Australian War Memorial, including one of nurse symbolising "Devotion".
1960s
- 1960 – Elizabeth Burchill's Innamincka describes remote area nursing of the 1930s.
- 1963 – Sister Mary Bernice Elphick begins long term as head of St Vincent's Hospital, Sydney.
- 1967 – New Zealand nursing undergo changes from being hospital-based apprenticeships to tertiary education institutions. [52]
- 1967 – Nurse and aviator Robin Miller begins outback flights delivering polio vaccine in northern Western Australia.
- 1967–1971 – 43 Australian army nurses serve in Vietnam War. [53] [54]
1970s
- 1971 – The Carpenter Report was released; a review released by New Zealand centred around the nursing education system, the report advocated training nurses in an educational environment. The government however decided that polytechs, not universities, were more appropriate for this; however the consequences of this were that nurses were only diploma level not degree level. [3]
- 1971 – Australian Nurses' Journal (later Australian Nursing Journal, later Australian Nursing and Midwifery Journal) founded. [55]
- 1973 – Christchurch and Wellington Polytechnics offer diploma-level nursing education; Massey and Victoria Universities (Wellington) start their post-registration bachelor's degrees. [3]
- 1975 – First nursing diploma programme in Australia in a College of Advanced Education (CAE) in Melbourne, followed quickly by programs in New South Wales, South Australia and Western Australia. [56]
- 1975 – First National Mental HealthNurses Congress. [57]
1980s
- 1980 – The Roper, Logan and Tierney model of nursing, based upon the activities of daily living, is published.
- 1982 – Australian Nursing Assessment Council established to regulate registration of foreign-trained nurses. [58]
- 1983 – The importance of human rights in nursing is made explicit in a statement adopted by the International Council of Nurses.
- 1983 – Former nurse Elizabeth Jolley's novel Mr Scobie's Riddle portrays life in a nursing home.
- 1988 – Anne Casey develops her child-centred nursing model while working as a paediatric oncology nurse in London.
- 1988 – Australian Critical Care journal founded.
- 1989 – Nurses' Health Study 2 begins. [59]
1990s
- 1990 – Last student graduated from New Zealand hospital program. [60]
- 1990 – Former nurse Lowitja O'Donoghue becomes inaugural chair of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission.
- 1992 – "Cultural safety" was made a requirement for nursing and midwifery education programs by the Nursing Council of New Zealand. Cultural safety allows effective nursing of patients and/or family members of those of another culture by a nurse who has reflected on one's own cultural identity and understands the impact of differing cultures in nursing practice and patient care. [61]
- 1992 – The Australian and New Zealand national governments signed a Mutual Recognition Agreement. [62]
- 1992 – Jan Bassett's Guns and Brooches surveys the history of Australian Army nursing. [63]
- 1996 – The Flight Nurse Association was created by the New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO) to recognise the need of training and education of the same standards throughout New Zealand. [64]
- 1997 – Movie Paradise Road based on the testimony of Betty Jeffrey on WWII captivity in Sumatra.
- 1997 – Congress of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nurses and Midwives formed.
