Education and Research at the Paediatric Hospitals

The founders of paediatric hospitals intended their institutions to serve for the education and training not only of doctors and medical students, but also of nurses and parents. During the nineteenth century the training of nurses proved to be the most successful aspect of the overall mission. Necessity was a potent stimulant for, as we have seen, the children's hospitals could not function properly with only casual nursing services. Furthermore the creation of these institutions coincided with the era of nursing reform, making it easier for management committees to launch their own training schemes. But change was not simply imposed from above. To get the service they wanted management committees had to negotiate with women of the higher social classes who volunteered to reorganize nursing in exchange for extensive freedom from interference. Thus nurses acquired their own leaders who believed that improved training and discipline should be rewarded with greater responsibility for nurses, sisters and superintendents. The founders' desire for better educated nurses was realized but lady superintendents and matrons would play a far larger part in organizing training programmes than ever anticipated by the original medical and lay planners. The hospital medical staff had expected to be in charge of nursing, as was traditional, but found instead that the new nursing orders demanded a considerable degree of self government. The training of nurses at Great Ormond Street began inauspiciously. In 1856 the committee of management announced that the hospital was prepared to receive young women for instruction. The aim was not to prepare trainees for careers as hospital nurses, but to teach privately employed nursery maids the art of handling sick children.1 Lady employers were not impressed, or could not spare the services of their children's caretakers, for not a single application was received during the first year.2 By this time the hospital was in serious financial straights with capital, as indicated by Jules Kosky, reduced to less than a thousand pounds.3 The situation was saved by Charles Dickens who consented to chair the annual dinner of February 1858. He was the main speaker and his eloquence released such a liberal response (Kosky reports that the dinner raised £2,850) that the committee of management was subsequently not only able to increase the number of occupied hospital beds from 30 to 44 but also to purchase an adjoining house and garden, 48 Great Ormond Street.4 A portion of the new …