The International Council of Nurses (ICN) has celebrated this day since 1965. In 1953 Dorothy Sutherland, an official with the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, proposed that President Dwight D. Eisenhower proclaim a "Nurses' Day"; but he did not approve it.
In 1891, Bai Kashibai Ganpat, was the First Indian Nurse to come for training. Training was at first two years but because three years when the Bombay Presidency Nursing Association was established in 1890.
Florence Nightingale was the first woman to have great influence over nursing in India and brought reforms in military and civilian hospitals in 1861. St. Stevens Hospital at Delhi was the first one to begin training Indian women as nurses in 1867.