This book compares the histories of psychiatric and voluntary hospital nurses' health from the rise of the professional nurse in 1880 to the advent of the National Health Service in 1948. In the process it reveals the ways national ideas about the organisation of nursing impacted on the lives of ordinary nurses. It explains why the management of nurses' health changed over time and between places, and sets these changes within a wider context of social, political and economic history. Today, high rates of sickness absence in the nursing profession attract increasing criticism. Nurses took...

Using unexamined sources, including diaries and unpublished manuscripts, this biography traces the life and work of nurse, writer, and activist Ellen N. La Motte (1873-1961), examining how she developed as a professional in the early twentieth century. -- .