The Calling: Life as a Student Nurse in the 1960s

Molly Brearley’s memoir begins in the mid-1960’s, as a naïve seventeen year old, leaving the security of her family home to start nurse training in Huddersfield. Friendships soon develop with other young nurses as they struggle to cope with strict discipline, late-night studying and long working hours. It is a decade of major change, the disaster of the war over we are experiencing more freedom, enabling us to enjoy the little free time we have. Being a group of mischievous teenagers, we soon start to break the rules, sneaking out of the nurses’ home at every opportunity for a night at the disco. What an impossible job the home sister had trying to keep us all in order. Many changes were also happening in the NHS. Nurses were full of optimism; they started to feel more confident and were beginning to develop greater independence. Career opportunities were greater than they had previously been. It was a fascinating time to be a teenager working in the nursing profession.