The founder Johns Hopkins' desire for a training school for female nurses was formally stated in a posthumous 1873 instruction letter to the board of trustees of the Johns Hopkins institutions.

The School of Nursing in conjunction with the Johns Hopkins Hospital was eventually founded in 1889 after in depth consultation with Florence Nightingale on its planning, organization, structure and curriculum.

[5] The school has four research centers (Center for Innovative Care in Aging, Center for Nursing Research and Sponsored Projects, Center for Collaborative Intervention Research and the Center on Health Disparities Research)[6] and also offers Interdisciplinary Fellowship research on violence, pain, and health disparities in underserved populations, as well as research focused on cardiovascular health prevention and risk reduction, care at end of life, community-based health promotion, health disparities, interpersonal violence, maternal-child health, psychoneuroimmunology, and symptom management areas.

[3] The school is also home to the country's first and only Peace Corps Fellows Program in nursing.

[7][8][9] The school offers a special program for Arts and Science College students to transfer after two years.