History of nursing

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,…

Nursing Times has launched an archive of its print issues published since 1905, meaning subscribers can now dip into the history of nursing at the touch of a button. Readers can discover how nursing has changed over the decades with each issue containing stories, features and even adverts offering a…

Journal rivalries that ended up in court, questions over her loyalty during wartime and the right to wear comfortable clothing were all battles fought by the first editor of Nursing Times. While recently updating the Nursing Times Wikipedia entry, I decided to add some historical information including the name of…

Nursing Times has a history of successfully campaigning on issues of importance to the nursing profession. Below you will find information on some of our more recent campaigns, their aims and achievements. During the last decade and more, Nursing Times has campaigned for protected time and funding for nurse training,…

The 1990s and 2000s saw Nursing Times run many campaigns. In 1992 Nursing Times launched the Mind Your Back campaign, calling for nurses to have the right to be protected from back injury caused by inappropriate lifting and for full implementation of new EC rules on manual handling. Up to…

Nursing Times’ decade started with a ‘Save It’ campaign aimed at nurses looking for ways to save the NHS money, so that more could be spent on better patient care. This prompted many interesting suggestions including dispensing with nurses’ paper caps, reducing spending on advertising for nurses, and lists to…

In January 1971, then Nursing Times editor Peggy Nuttall asked readers to call her up with their thoughts and opinions rather than send the usual letters and all because of a postal strike. The UK joined the European Economic Community in January 1973. A Nursing Times editorial said: ‘As a profession,…

A prophetic article was published in Nursing Times in 1960 by Claire Rayner, then an out-patient sister, who regretted the number of women forced to use backstreet abortionists. The solution, she proposed, was a change in the law ‘making performed therapeutic abortion available to these unhappy girls rather than allowing…

At the start of the decade Nursing Times reported on the RCN’s attempts to raise £500,000 to ensure finances for its service to provide further education and special preparation of trained nurses to become nurse teachers, managers and specialists of the future. Nursing Times published a review of what had…

War brings new clinical challenges to health professionals – mainly in the shape of traumatic injuries they would rarely if ever see in peacetime. Like their medical colleagues nurses needed to learn quickly how to care for these injuries, and Nursing Times was on hand to support them with its…