Anna Reijnvaan

Anna Reijnvaan, whose surname the English Wikipedia article spells Reynvaan, was a Dutch nurse and a pioneer of the nursing profession in the Netherlands, living from 1844 to 1920. Born Johanna Paulina Reynvaan to a tobacco merchant, she wanted to nurse during the Franco-Prussian War but lacked the permission of her father. She trained at the first nursing school in the country, opened in 1878 on the initiative of Jeltje de Bosch Kemper, and graduated in 1880 as the first professionally trained nurse of the Netherlands. She worked at the Amsterdam Binnengasthuis, where caregivers had lacked formal education, and with the progressive physician Jacob van Deventer she became known for introducing modern hygiene and method into hospital care. She became deputy director of the Buitengasthuis in 1883, taught the practical part of the new nursing course, and with Kemper founded a journal for nursing and arranged the first nursing conference in 1891. She also wrote an autobiographical novel, Zuster Clara.