Abstract
This paper examines how the Queen’s Nurses sought to provide nursing care to Scotland’s poor immediately after the development of the National Health Service (NHS) in the 1940s. The Queen’s Nurses were the district nurses of the Queen’s Nursing Institute Scotland (QNIS) which was established in 1909 as an offshoot of the Queen Victoria Jubilee Institute for Nurses, itself founded in 1889 to educate nurses to care for the sick poor in their own homes. From the outset, the ethos of the QNIS was to tackle health inequalities in Scotland by providing nursing care for those people unable to pay. The NHS incorporated the Queen’s district nurses into its framework and they became local health authority employees, forming part of community-based health services.60 This paper utilises oral histories of Scottish Queen’s district nurses to try and understand their working responsibilities and relationships within a variety of community settings. It also analyses how these helped the nurses address health inequalities, both formally and informally.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Caring for the Poor in Twentieth-Century Scotland |
| Subtitle of host publication | Report of a Queen’s Nursing Institute Scotland/Glasgow Caledonian University workshop held in Glasgow, 11–12 September 2014 |
| Editors | Janet Greenlees |
| Place of Publication | Edinburgh |
| Publisher | The Queen's Nursing Institute Scotland |
| Pages | 23-29 |
| Number of pages | 7 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 9780953826827 |
| Publication status | Published - 2014 |
Keywords
- history of medicine
- Queen’s Nurses
- National Health Service
- health inequalities