Nursing has always been a challenging but rewarding profession. As part of the core healthcare team, nurses take responsibility for the care they provide to patients, displaying both compassion and discipline in their daily work.

Demanding professions require rigorous training, and nursing is no exception. As the real story to ‘Call the Midwife’, Nursing Through the Years is a unique book that spans eight decades to reveal the fascinating lives of nurses who trained and worked at The Royal London Hospital, serving the community of the East End of London.

Having interviewed over 85 nurses, whose experiences span from the 1940s to the 2000s, this important account captures the memories of their time at The Royal London. Exploring each decade, the extent to which nursing has developed and changed, and the highs and lows of training to be a nurse in a renowned teaching hospital are recalled in detail.

It is a treasure chest of recollections which are informative, entertaining, inspiring, enlightening and also controversial, often challenging the myths and misconceptions that continue to surround nursing today.

• Cover
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• Timeline
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 The 1940s – War and Peace
• Chapter 2 The 1950s – ‘Getting over the war’
• Chapter 3 The 1960s – ‘The Times They Are a-Changin’’ (Bob Dylan 1964)
• Chapter 4 The 1970s – The old and the new
• Chapter 5 The 1980s – Transition and turbulence
• Chapter 6 The 1990s – From apprentice to graduate nurse
• Chapter 7 The Millennium and beyond
• Chapter 8 Moving on
• Chapter 9 How things have changed
• Conclusion
• Glossary
• Bibliography