A History of Nursing at St. George's launched through Nurses Voices

Nurses voices is an oral history project which aims to create a living history of St George’s Hospital and Medical School over the past seven decades through the memories of the group that in many ways have defined its character — the nurses. The project was launched at the Lanesborough Hotel, Hyde Park, the original site of St George’s Hospital before it moved to Tooting, south west London in the 1970’s. It is run through the Faculty of Health and Social Care Sciences, a joint venture between St George’s Hospital Medical School and Kingston University. Hospital histories have traditionally concentrated on buildings and celebrated physicians and surgeons, but patients’ experience on the ward or in outpatients, has more often been dependent on intimate contact with nursing staff.

The project aims to collect interviews with nurses and midwives who trained or worked (or are still working) at St George’s from the early 1930’s right through to today. Interviews will be conducted covering all aspects of the nursing experience at St George’s which could include the introduction of the National Health Service to the ability to play tennis being listed as a necessary attribute for a potential St George’s Nurse in the 1950’s. Nurse volunteers will carry out all the interviews. Nancy Esterson, 1958-1971, remembers ‘You could reasonably expect to see patients from one week to the next which is every different to what you would expect today. So you knew your patients.

The Sister was a great teacher, and all the housemen went to her for guidance and if they didn't go to her, she still gave it to them.' Chris Eberhardie 1965 to now, recollects being a night Sister at Atkinson Morely Hospital ‘ A lot of the job was supervising in the wards but leaving them to it, teaching and the administrative essentials of the hospital, dealing with doctors if they needed to woken. And also looking after relatives. I seemed to spend a lot of the nights in the chapel with very upset people.’ The resulting recordings will be stored in the archive at St George’s Hospital Medical School and Kingston University and the material will be used to stage exhibitions and a website where sound clips and photographs will be used to create a multimedia resource.