Nurses and Nursing

Nurses and nursing are firmly rooted in Britain's heritage, for the profession, as we know it today, owes much to the pioneering work of Florence Nightingale. Before she helped establish the first nurse training school in Liverpool in the late 1800s, the women who looked after the sick were a motley mix.Susan Cohen takes us on a nostalgic journey through the history of nurses and nursing in Britain, from the pre-Nightingale days through to the post-NHS era. She examines how the role of the nurse has developed from the untrained handywoman and private nurse, through the early nurses who acted as ‘health missioners’, to the highly trained professionals we recognize today, and traces the introduction of the training of nurses and the establishment of the various professional organisations that represent them. She also explores the way that nurse training has evolved to reflect the advances in medical treatment, explaining how nurses were able to engage more widely with the community by undergoing additional training as, for example, district nurses, school nurses, midwives, health visitors and mental health nurses. Attention will also be paid to the special contribution that nurses made on the Home Front during both world wars. The text is enlivened by the inclusion of first-hand accounts from nurses through the ages.