As her readers will discover, Joan Lock is both perceptive and interested in people; this chronicle of her adventures in nursing is irreverent, harrowing, dramatic, sad and funny. As in her earlier book, Lady Policeman, she takes us into the everyday life of the minions of the profession.
Whilst doubtful about the authoritarian system Florence Nightingale inspired, Joan Lock feels sympathy with her down-to-earth attitudes and as impatient of the public's obsession with saintly vocation as Miss Nightingale was of those who thought her first sorties into nursing 'shameful' and a 'disgrace'.
But our author found that life in hospital does mean the excitement of being at the heart of things, the drama of life-or-death struggle, finding humour in the most unlikely circumstances and learning fast about people.
She left nursing immediately she had finished her general training, the reluctance revived by petty discipline and having to work extremely hard while carrying heavy responsibility and being rewarded with a pittance. Better than any white paper or commission, Reluctant Nightingale explains the extremely high wastage in nursing at the ordinary level during the 1950s.
Whilst doubtful about the authoritarian system Florence Nightingale inspired, Joan Lock feels sympathy with her down-to-earth attitudes and as impatient of the public's obsession with saintly vocation as Miss Nightingale was of those who thought her first sorties into nursing 'shameful' and a 'disgrace'.
But our author found that life in hospital does mean the excitement of being at the heart of things, the drama of life-or-death struggle, finding humour in the most unlikely circumstances and learning fast about people.
She left nursing immediately she had finished her general training, the reluctance revived by petty discipline and having to work extremely hard while carrying heavy responsibility and being rewarded with a pittance. Better than any white paper or commission, Reluctant Nightingale explains the extremely high wastage in nursing at the ordinary level during the 1950s.
Used availability for Joan Lock's Reluctant Nightingale