History of nursing

I wonder how many people have used NHS services over the past 75 years? It must be an astonishingly high number, given the service has touched most – if not all – our lives over those decades. More than a million people are estimated to have interactions with the NHS…

A long time ago, a university lecturer of mine put up a slide stating that “the past is the key to the present”. For whatever reason, this simple idiom has stuck with me down the years. It came to mind again this week as we launched the Nursing Times Archive,…

What about the nurses? Patient demand, nurse shortage, working conditions and unprecedented protest in 1930s Britain. “Their aim was to make themselves seen, their voices heard, and to raise public awareness of their poor conditions” On 5 April 1938 an unprecedented protest in the history of general nursing, known as…

The Florence Nightingale Foundation (FNF) had planned quite a celebration this year. May 12 2020 marked Florence Nightingale’s bicentenary and we had scheduled a host of activities. Celebrations would be repeated by nurses and midwives across the world excited by 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) designated “The Year of the…

Laura Robson-Mainwaring details the different documents held at the National Archives about Florence Nightingale, showing not just what we know about her but how we know it. Background Florence Nightingale, famous for her work as a nurse and social reformer, was born 200 years ago on 12th May 1820. During the…

I am asking myself many questions as we live and work through this pandemic. Not least of these is what have we learned about ourselves, and what can we learn for the future? I have learned what can be achieved when we come together with a shared purpose; keeping our…

On 12 May this year we will celebrate the 200th birthday of Florence Nightingale. As we mark International Women’s Day, we should acknowledge her fight for women to do what was right, to have a dream and to pursue it. Her contribution to furthering the rights of women have often been dismissed and debated…

My name is Mike Smith, I’m currently part of the specialist practice district nursing programme and I wanted to share a short story with you about how I came into nursing. When I was eight years old, my grandad had terminal oesophageal cancer and had was receiving palliative care by…

The NHS remains the nation’s most valued institution, and nursing and midwifery – the biggest section of its workforce – are our most-trusted professions. We all rely on nurses and midwives from birth to our final moments. I’ve seen nurses save lives many times, from those at the bedside, who…

Florence Nightingale died over a century ago at the age of 90. She was a social and environmental activist as well as being a nurse – influencing the leaders of many nations in her efforts to attempt to improve the health and education of their citizens. She made significant sanitation…