Charles West and Catherine Wood and the Early Development of Children’s Nursing at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children 1852–1888

Abstract

This article investigates the origins of children’s nursing in England through the work of Dr Charles West and Catherine Wood, who were instrumental in the development of paediatric nursing at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, England’s first in-patient hospital for sick children. It focuses on ideas developed by West and taken further by Wood, which demonstrated that sick children differed fundamentally from sick adults, both in how they reacted to disease and in their care needs, and how as result, sick children required specially trained nurses. The article uses the writings of both West and Wood, and also the extensive archives of the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, to explore the development of these ideas.