This book follows the lives of female Jewish refugees who fled Nazi persecution and became nurses. Nursing was nominally a profession but with its poor pay and harsh discipline, it was unpopular with British women. In the years preceding the Second World War, hospitals in Britain suffered chronic nurse staffing crises. As the country faced inevitable war, the Government and the profession’s elite courted refugees as an antidote to the shortages, but many hospitals refused to employ Continental Jews.
The book explores the changes in the refugees’ status and lives from the war years to the foundation of the National Health Service and to the latter decades of the twentieth century. It places the refugees at the forefront of manoeuvres in nursing practice, education and research at a time of social upheaval and alterations in the position of women.
Spis treści
Preface
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction – Nursing: Gender, migration and opportunity
Chapter 1 – Escape
Chapter 2 – The nursing world
Chapter 3 – War nurse
Chapter 4 – From the post-war world to a nursing legacy
Conclusion
Bibliography
O autorze
Jane Brooks is a Lecturer in Nursing at the University of Manchester and Deputy Director of the UK Centre for the History of Nursing and Midwifery