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Tracing Nurses

A revised guide to research family and local history

Stuart Wildman 6 Apr 2023

This blog promotes the latest version of the History of Forum's guide to tracing nurses. It includes a wide variety of sources for people researching family and local history.

Black and white photo of nurses

The History of Nursing Forum's revised version of "Tracing Nurses”, is now online. Whether you are interested in family or local history, biographies, or academic research this guide helps you to locate records and find nurses. The guide includes well known sources such as the Census and the Register of Nurses, but also highlights others to be found in local and county archives. As well as the established sources it highlights some newly catalogued or indexed resources of whose existence experienced researchers may not be aware.

The forum hopes that this guide will support you in your efforts to explore the history of nursing or the life and career of a particular individual. We would love to hear about the stories you find, so please share them with us. We would also like feedback on the guide – do you find it helpful? is there anything confusing or missing? or anything you think we could improve? Please email honf@rcn.org.uk us your comments.

Download Tracing Nurses (pdf)

Stuart Wildman

Stuart Wildman

Chair of History of Nursing Forum

Honorary Research Fellow, University of Birmingham

Stuart is a retired lecturer in nursing having had a career spanning over 38 years in the National Health Service and higher education. Since retirement in 2014 he has pursued his interest in the history of nursing.

Page last updated - 04/09/2023