Ethel Gordon Fenwick

Ethel Gordon Fenwick written by Jenny Main and published by

Pen & Sword Books - £22 - Hardback - Pages 200

A great nursing reformer, Ethel Gordon Fenwick was born before the age of the motor

car and died at the start of the jet age. When she began her career, nursing was a vocation,

unregulated with a dangerous variety of standards and inefficiencies. A gifted nurse, Ethel

worked alongside great medical men of the day and, aged 24, she became the youngest

matron of St Bartholomew’s hospital London, where she instigated many improvements.

At that time, anyone could be called a nurse, regardless of ability. Ethel recognised that

for the safety of patients, and of nurses, there must be an accepted standard of training,

with proof of qualification provided by a professional register.

Often contentious, Ethel was a determined woman. She fought for nearly thirty years to achieve a register to ensure nurses were qualified, respected professionals. A suffragist and journalist, she travelled to America where she met like-minded nursing colleagues. As well as helping to create the International Council of Nurses, and the Royal British Nurses Association, she was also instrumental in organising nurses and supplies during the Graeco-Turkish War, and was awarded several medals for this work. Thanks to her long campaign for registration, a year after her death nurses were ready to take their place alongside other professionals when the National Health Service began in 1948.

A lovely little book about a nursing pioneer and forerunner of high stands and hard work. Ethel would see her nursing profession as almost on a par with the doctoral profession, she saw training, standards, nursing care and professionalism as the essential ingredients to lifting the whole nursing to the high standard it needed to be. This book is written with a lot of facts and evidence which shows there has been a lot of research put into the book and it’s very well written. It would be good to see this book get more notice so that the likes of Ethel Gordon Fenwick are not forgotten but given the respect and recognition she deserves.