A History of Apprenticeship Nurse Training in Ireland

A History of Apprenticeship Nurse Training in Ireland By Gerard M. Fealy (London: Routledge, 2006) (216 pages; £70.00 cloth)

The history of nursing in Ireland has yet to be fully told. This is ironic given the fact that by the early nineteenth century, Dublin, the island's capital, had one of the more sophisticated medical infrastructures in Europe. This latest work by Gerard Fealy, a nurse by training, offers a much-needed narrative of the evolution of nurse training in Ireland over the last hundred years. Fealy's narrative shows how outside forces, including nineteenth-century nurse reformers, the growing technical advancements in medicine, the role of women's suffrage, improved educational opportunities, and the European Union, have all played a role in the effort to standardize the education of Ireland's nurses.

Fealy begins by discussing Ireland's early provision of medical care. He shows how in Ireland, as elsewhere, this process was rather ad hoc as government, religious, and private organizations sought to provide medical aid to Dublin's growing urban population. Fealy then focuses on the increasing effort by local Irish leaders and the British Parliament to improve the quality of nurse training in Dublin hospitals. The author argues for the increasing influence of the lady superintendents, although, while these women became highly influential in the effort to standardize and improve training, their power nevertheless remained inconsistent among Dublin hospitals.

As Fealy moves into the twentieth century, he...