If you are searching for a nurse who worked between 1898 and 1968, over 1.6 million historic nursing records for the UK and Ireland are available online at Ancestry.

There are three new collections:-
UK & Ireland, Nursing Registers, 1898-1968 from the Royal College of Nursing: the largest of the three archives. It includes scans of the original documents and details about individual people including home address, education and previous employment history. Among the nurses listed is Dame Sarah Swift, founder of the RCN.

UK & Ireland, Queen’s Nursing Institute Roll of Nurses, 1891-1931: these records were supplied by the Wellcome Institute, and further records will be released this autumn. Many of these nurses were trained as midwives and health visitors, treating patients in their own homes before the beginning of the NHS.

Scotland, Nursing Applications, 1921-1945: these records date from the beginning of state registration of nurses in 1921.

Most fascinating is the additional information provided about individuals, which may fill in essential gaps in family history research.

If you don’t have an Ancestry subscription, you can view the RCN records at the RCN Library.

For help on how to search for information on patients, doctors and nurses, read this Help Guide by The National Archives.

If you want to read more about family history research, try this:-
Was your relative a #gardener at a country house
Using photographic archives
Finding your nonconformist relative 

In Ignoring Gravity, Rose Haldane must track down a friend of her birth mother. All she knows is her name, Susan, and that she was a nurse in the Sixties. These online records would have made Rose’s search for Susan much easier.

★★★★★ “I devoured the book in one go, unable to put it down despite the tirade of emotions it brought to the surface” #secrets #mystery #family #KU
BUY

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
Was your relative a nurse #familyhistory https://wp.me/paZ3MX-8t via #AdoptionStoriesBlog