Irish nurses made up a large proportion of the National Health Service (NHS) workforce from its establishment in 1948. Irish nurses in the NHS: an oral history, edited by Louise Ryan, Gráinne McPolin and Neha Doshi, is a much-needed volume to give these men and women a voice and the space to tell their stories of becoming nurses and working in Britain during a time of huge change in the healthcare landscape. Based on forty-five oral testimonies, the authors chart the lives of these Irish nurses and their contributions to the health service from the 1940s to the present day.
The book is informed by testimonies from those who trained in Britain between the 1940s and the early 1980s, providing insight into some unique experiences. Some nurses emigrated even further after qualifying, to places such as Canada and the US. One nurse who trained in the 1960s, Caitriona (a pseudonym), ended up renting a mobile home with four other nurses to go ‘down through Mexico for three months’ (138). The majority of interviewees are women, although the authors do recognise that more work is needed on the role of Irish male nurses.
The book begins with an introduction to the research project: how it came about, its research methods, and data handling and analysis. Chapter two offers an overview of migration history and overseas nurses in the NHS. The third chapter provides a real sense of the interviewees’ experiences of recruitment in Ireland. Some had never considered a career in nursing, while others, set on nursing, regarded working in Britain as more attractive compared to Ireland, where training courses were often oversubscribed and expensive. Miriam, who ‘just wanted to get away from home’, pursued nursing in Britain and ended up loving ‘every minute of it’; ‘it was the best thing I ever did,’ she told the interviewer (42, 137).
Even when someone had wanted to pursue nursing, it did not make leaving Ireland any easier. Chapter four examines the more poignant side of leaving home to build a career elsewhere. Many of these soon-to-be-nurses were young women in their late teens and this was their first experience of leaving home. By emigrating to Britain, some of these women (and men) experienced living in large cities and meeting people of different ethnicities for the first time. They also encountered different practices in the British healthcare system than they would have had they stayed in Ireland. The fifth chapter, which provides insights on the training undertaken by newly recruited nurses, highlights how some trainees wanted to be exempt from abortion services for religious reasons (106). Chapter six moves into less heavy subjects and considers the social lives of student nurses. The authors note: ‘These teenage students often held responsible and stressful roles on large wards, despite their relative inexperience’ (110). Being able to attend dance halls, for example, allowed these students a chance to unwind and socialise, away from their stressful work environments.
An interesting focus of the book is career development once these students qualified. The opportunities were wide ranging, with some Irish women and men moving into district nursing, radiography, health visiting, sexual health and some to the education sector. The reality that many had to leave work once they became pregnant is considered in chapter seven. Although many were able to return to work once their children had grown beyond infancy (some going into part-time service or taking night shifts), getting married and starting a family often halted their careers for a number of years.
Chapter eight shifts focus slightly, looking at the experiences of being Irish in Britain. A number of interviewees experienced discriminatory remarks, more often in district work than in hospital work. One interviewee recalled how she was about to enter a shop for a chocolate bar before being taken aback by the ‘No blacks, no dogs, no Irish’ sign on the shop door (173). This chapter highlights the reality that, although these men and women were providing healthcare to local communities, they were still subjected to discriminatory remarks both inside and outside work.
Ryan, McPolin and Doshi end chapter nine with the comment: ‘the sheer scale and significance of [Irish nurses’] contribution deserves to be more widely acknowledged and celebrated’ (207). This book goes some way to fill this gap and credit the Irish men and women who left Ireland to become NHS nurses. It acknowledges and celebrates the role they played in delivering healthcare to people in Britain.
