[1] She established nursing training programs in the United States and Japan, and created the first system for keeping individual medical records for hospitalized patients.

However, her father died of tuberculosis just weeks after they arrived there, and the family soon had to return to Richards' grandparents' home in Newbury, Vermont.

Not long after their engagement, Poole joined the Green Mountain Boys and left home to fight in the American Civil War.

No monthly allowance was given for three months.” Upon graduating one year later, she moved to New York City, where she was hired as a night supervisor at Bellevue Hospital Center.

[citation needed] In an effort to upgrade her skills, Richards took an intensive, seven-month nurse training program in England in 1877.

On her return to the United States with Nightingale's warmest wishes, Richards pioneered the founding and superintending of nursing training schools across the nation.

[5] When she returned to the United States in 1890, she worked as a nurse for another twenty years while helping to establish special institutions for those with mental illnesses, and created the first system for keeping individual medical records for hospitalized patients.

She wrote a book about her experiences, Reminiscences of Linda Richards (1911) which has been republished in 2006 as America's First Trained Nurse.