ABSTRACT
From the date of the Nurses' Registration Act, and the foundation of the General Nursing Council in 1919, it became a legal requirement that nurse training be standardised and systematised in England and Wales. This was achieved by the introduction of a national training syllabus and examination. This chapter examines how this apprenticeship training developed, by focusing on this first syllabus, and consider to what extent Nightingale's principles still dominated. The Nurses' Registration Act 1919 had vested authority in a General Nursing Council to make rules requiring candidates for admission to the register to have undergone prescribed training and possess a prescribed experience in the nursing of the sick. The Committee on the Recruitment and Training of Nurses was set up in 1946. This followed the massive impact of the Second World War and was set against the background of the impending establishment of the National Health Service and free access to health care for all.
