Reactions from the medical and nursing professions to Nightingale's “reform(s)” of nurse training in the late 19th century

Abstract

In 1860, the Nightingale School of Nursing opened at St Thomas's Hospital, London. Florence Nightingale's overriding raison d'etre in the setting up of this foundation was a replacement of the old fashioned nurse (caricatured by Mrs Gamp—an “ignorant and immoral drunkard”) by the highly trained, and eminently respectable “lady-nurse”. While this change met with a great deal of approval from the lay public and the majority of the nursing profession, a minority of the latter together with the bulk of medical practitioners (including several leading physicians and surgeons of the day) wholeheartedly opposed this revolutionary move. It was felt, by them, that the medical profession was in danger of losing control over nursing with the resultant sacrifice of satisfactory patient care. Today, both medical student and nurse training is moving noticeably away from the bedside, an orientation which has added such an important dimension to British medical/nurse training over so many generations. Is this 19th century experience yet another example of history repeating itself in the medical sphere?