"The weakest link in the chain of nursing"? : recruitment and retention in mental health nursing, 1948-1968

This thesis examines recruitment and retention in mental health nursing inEngland between 1948 and 1968. Its first objective is to explore the explanationsthat were given for the severe shortage of mental nurses that occurred in thisperiod. The study will look at the official views on this topic, such as those ofpoliticians, civil servants, senior nurses, psychiatrists, union leaders andadministrators. It will also discuss the views of mental nurses themselves as towhy this occurred. The second objective is to analyse the strategies that wereadopted in an attempt to improve both recruitment and retention in this period.Primary archival sources are examined to explore these research questions.Secondary sources and thirteen oral history interviews also contribute to thisthesis and enable the argument to be placed both within the history of nursing andof psychiatry.This thesis makes an original contribution to the history of mental health nursingin the first two decades of the National Health Service. The available literaturesuggests that poor pay. working conditions and low status were the main reasonswhy it was difficult to both recruit and retain mental health nurses in this period.However this PhD argues that the reasons are more complex than officialexplanations suggest and are often interrelated. A dissonance is found between theofficial explanations of the shortage (such as views at the Ministry of Health) andthose at grass roots level. In addition the strategies that were adopted to improverecruitment and retention were found to have largely unsuccessful. It is arguedthat this was because of the difference between the image and ideal of the mentalnurse which was promulgated by the Ministry of Health and the General NursingCouncil (based on a scientific, sickness model of care) and the reality of mentalnursing in the large institutions of this period, which was much more likely tohave been mainly custodial, with only intermittent applications of new techniquesand practices.Shortages in nursing remain a topical issue today and the study therefore utiliseshistory to explore a subject that remains of contemporary concern.

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral (Level 8)

Year dc:date.issued

2007

Author dc:creator

• Chatterton, CS

Language dc:language

en

Identifier

oai:salford-repository.worktribe.com:1337237

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:salford-repository.worktribe.com:1337237