A Brief History of Nursing in the UK

This paper provides a brief History of Nursing in the UK and is written by Professor B Gail Thomas. It identifies changes in the nursing profession, nurse education and medical advances from 1800; the changes from 1900 provide useful context for the Memories of Nursing project.

You can either read the article on this webpage or download it as a PDF document with the link below.

A Brief History of Nursing in the UK
Professor B Gail Thomas
March 2016

Introduction
“For many nurses, the skills of nursing or caring lie at the heart of their work. Until the mid-nineteenth century, nursing was not an activity which was thought to demand either skill or training. Nor did it command respect. As Florence Nightingale was to put it, nursing was left to ‘those who were too old, too weak, too drunken, too dirty, too stupid or too bad to do anything else’. The intimate body services to be done for the patient were considered to be unseemly or immodest for young unmarried or well-bred females, especially if not a family member. Cleaning and feeding of another person were regarded as domestic tasks performed by servants.

Also, before 1880, the hospital treatment of illness was fairly rare. Where home services were adequate, a sick person was attended by the family doctor and nursed either by female family members or servants. However, from the middle of the nineteenth century, the discovery and application of anaesthetics and antiseptic surgery advanced medical technique and allowed all classes to seek treatment in hospitals. From the 1860s onwards, a series of nurses’ training schools began to produce fairly large numbers of educated women who were eagerly accepted by hospital authorities whose medical officers, patients and public opinion in general were demanding higher levels of nursing skill in the wards.” (University of Glasgow; www.gla.ac.uk).

This description sets the scene for the rise of professional nursing that has gained in status and scope since the late nineteenth century. This paper highlights a number of key points in the timeline of professional nursing, nursing education and advances in medical care that influence the practice of nurses in the mid to late twentieth century, the time when most of our participants in the ‘Memories of Nursing’ project were working.

Professionalization of Nursing
Therefore it can be seen that medical treatments and both professional nursing practice and education progressed considerably through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Nursing became an organized group, adopting the four key characteristics of a profession as described by Blane (1991).  Firstly the professions represent a highly skilled sector of the labour market with a defined body of specialized knowledge. This knowledge is transmitted to trainees who are prepared in institutions under the control of the profession; the knowledge base is extended through research. Secondly, there is a monopoly on the field of work in that practitioners must be registered by the state as being suitable to practice the profession and there is agreement by substantial employers that only those registered will be given a job. Thirdly, there is autonomy in the organization, development and definition of the nature of the work undertaken. This implies that only a member of the profession is competent to assess another professional’s work. Fourthly, there is a code of ethics that prohibits the exploitation of clients and regulates inter-professional relations.

All of these characteristics of a profession are now fully embedded in nursing in the UK. The specialized knowledge required to practice competently has expanded as new treatments have been discovered, necessitating enhanced knowledge and advanced professional decision making skills.  This underpinned the move to higher academic levels and migration of education from hospital based schools, where the apprenticeship model of learning (and cheap labour) was common, to colleges and finally universities where all initial preparation is now at degree level. The early British Nurses Association led to the General Nursing Council being established in 1919; the role of registering members of the nursing profession was passed to the United Kingdom Central Council in 1979 and then to the Nursing and Midwifery Council in 2002 and these bodies also defined the scope of practice and codes of ethics.

Conclusion
The scope and status of nursing has changed since the days of Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole. The nurses who were recorded as part of the ‘Memories of Nursing’ project often practiced before the full professionalization of nursing took place, training in an apprenticeship model with little power or reward. However they often remember the standards of care at the time with pride, the responsibility they were afforded with acceptance and their rich, varied experiences with fondness. The transition taken place in nursing perhaps has not all been positive and the need for caring, compassionate and competent nurses remains as important today as ever.

References

Blane D (1991) Health professions in Sociology as Applied to Medicine (ed G Scambler) Balliere Tindall London

Eaton A (2012) Pre-registration nurse education: A brief history http://www.williscommission.org.uk/

Encyclopaedia Britannica ‘Nursing’ http://www.britannica.com/topic/nursing

The Guardian ‘A history of nursing- timeline’ http://www.theguardian.com

University of Glasgow ‘A History of Nursing’ http://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/medicine/aboutus/history/20thcentury/nursing/