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

Chatterton, CS

Abstract

This thesis examines recruitment and retention in mental health nursing in
England between 1948 and 1968. Its first objective is to explore the explanations
that were given for the severe shortage of mental nurses that occurred in this
period. The study will look at the official views on this topic, such as those of
politicians, civil servants, senior nurses, psychiatrists, union leaders and
administrators. It will also discuss the views of mental nurses themselves as to
why this occurred. The second objective is to analyse the strategies that were
adopted 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 this
thesis and enable the argument to be placed both within the history of nursing and
of psychiatry.
This thesis makes an original contribution to the history of mental health nursing
in the first two decades of the National Health Service. The available literature
suggests that poor pay. working conditions and low status were the main reasons
why 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 official
explanations suggest and are often interrelated. A dissonance is found between the
official explanations of the shortage (such as views at the Ministry of Health) and
those at grass roots level. In addition the strategies that were adopted to improve
recruitment and retention were found to have largely unsuccessful. It is argued
that this was because of the difference between the image and ideal of the mental
nurse which was promulgated by the Ministry of Health and the General Nursing
Council (based on a scientific, sickness model of care) and the reality of mental
nursing in the large institutions of this period, which was much more likely to
have been mainly custodial, with only intermittent applications of new techniques
and practices.
Shortages in nursing remain a topical issue today and the study therefore utilises
history to explore a subject that remains of contemporary concern.

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Aug 16, 2021
• Award Date: Jan 1, 2007