Sophia Palmer graduated from Training School. She later become the founder and Superintendent of the Washington D.C. Training School for Nursing and following that, the Superintendent of the Training School for nurses in Rochester, Ne w York. It was in New York when she campaigned for state licensure of nurses.
She campaigned for "permissive licensure laws " which allowed anyone to call themselves a nurse. However, only nurses who had graduated from approved nursing schools coul d call themselves Registered Nurses. Today all states in the U.S required mandatory licensure for anyone who called themselves a nurse.
Ms. Palmer most notable contribution to nursing was her vision of a nursing journal that would be owned and cont rolled by nurses. As one of the leaders, who had helped in starting the major nursing organizations, she was in a position to make the journal a reality. She edited the American Journal of Nursing (AJN) from its creation in 1900 till 1920.
The American Nursing Association (ANA) owned all the stock in the American Journal of Nursing Company until this year, 1996, when Lippincott Publishing Company purchased it, which now publishes the AJN and Nursing Research. The company also publishes numerous b ooks, pamphlets and documents pertaining to nursing. The American Journal of Nursing is the official publication of the ANA.