Henny Tscherning

Henriette "Henny" Tscherning (née Schultz; 5 March 1853 – 6 August 1932) was a pioneering Danish nurse and trade unionist who headed the Danish Nurses' Organization for 28 years (1899–1927). She introduced a three-year nurses training programme culminating in an examination which provided official state authorization for nurses to take up work.

Early life and education Born on 5 March 1853 in Copenhagen, Tscherning was the daughter of postal inspector Theodor Schultz and his wife Anna Margrathe Ipsen. She was raised in a well-to-do home, one of a family of 10 children. Drawn by the trends of the time, rather than become a housewife, when she was 24 she left home to be trained as a nurse. As there were no established formal training courses for nurses as the time, in 1878 she started as an apprentice at the Municipal Hospital in Copenhagen, working under the head physician Andreas Brünniche and matron Margaret Bahnson. The following year she was appointed chief nurse in a surgical department.

She became an active trade unionist, at a time when the requirements of nurses were usually in the hands of male doctors. Over her 27 years as president, she brought about important changes, encouraging the nurses to fight together for improvements in their working conditions. One of her greatest achievements was to systematize the training of nurses, proposing a three-year compulsory course covering both practice and theory. Those who were successful in the examination at the end of the course, received official authorization to begin work. In 1921, she also introduced courses for senior nurses. Under Tscherning's leadership, in 1926 Charlotte Munck published her Haandbog i Sygepleje (Nursing Handbook), a textbook describing all aspects of training. The three-year course and the official examination for authorization to practise came only in 1933, a year after Tscherning's death. In 1909, she had left her husband Eilert Adam Tschering, with whom she had four children: Ellen Meggy (1887), Anton Frederik (1888), Karen (1890) and Gudrun (1893).