Learning on the Job: A History of Mental Health Care

Before 1891, nursing staff in psychiatric hospitals received no formal training and were expected to learn on the job. Claire Chatterton explores the history of “asylum attendants”, and explains how registered nurses and staff without formal training continued to work alongside each other well into the twentieth century. We then hear from modern day mental health support workers, leaving us to reflect on what we can learn from this history.

Speakers

Professor Claire Chatterton is currently the Associate Head of School for Health and Social Care at the Open University. She is a visiting professor at the University of Chester and the University of Chichester. Her research interests lie in the history of nursing and mental health care and she is a past chair of the Royal College of Nursing's History of Nursing Society. She is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Royal College of Nursing.

Other speakers TBC

I MAGE: Courtesy of Bethlem Museum of the Mind

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Host or Publisher Royal College of Nursing Library & Archives