Memories of Nursing Archive
This archive is a collection of stories, memorabilia, informative articles, documents and photographs. The purpose is to provide an interesting collection that provides context for the Memories of Nursing project, a Heritage Lottery funded project where stories of older nurses who primarily reside at the Retired Nurses National Home in Bournemouth are recorded as oral histories. In order for these stories to be understood, it is important that we offer some background, therefore this archive includes:
- The story of the Retired Nurses National Home in Bournemouth including an article on its history, original documents from the home and video footage from the 1990s.
- A history of nursing looking at key changes from early 1800s but focussing primarily in the mid twentieth century when most of the participants practised. In addition, there is a number of original documents relating to nursing and nurse education in Dorset and Salisbury in the UK where geographically the research is situated.
- A history of midwifery identifying some historic power struggles; many of the nurses interviewed did midwifery training as part of their continuing professional development but few practised as midwives for any length of time as was quite common last century, before direct entry midwifery became increasingly the norm.
- Oral history including audio clips from the recorded interviews, presented under key themes from the initial analysis of the narratives (hierarchy, responsibility, hygiene) and stories of nursing in World War Two and of midwifery experiences. This section also features a paper on Oral History as a research method and its importance in capturing the past in order to learn for the future.
- Video clips from events at the Home and from external sources about nursing in the past and nursing history projects.
- Photographs relating to participants in the project, the RNNH and nursing practice in the past, both from this project and more generally.
- ‘Nursing during a crisis’ describes an event that took place at Bournemouth University where the experiences of nurses during two challenging periods- World War 2 and the Covid 19 global pandemic- were compared and contrasted.
We hope you find it interesting.
Please select a category below to view the related archive content.