ABSTRACT
Correspondence, articles and editorials, published in nursing journals from 1960-1970 constitute a key body of evidence charting nursing opinion from all ranks of nurses. This material forms a testimony to the deep tension felt about the changes occurring to the ethos and practice of nursing. Nurses were increasingly under pressure, it seems, to carry out research in order to prove themselves in their jobs. The body of evidence examined in this chapter gives a window into the feelings of nurses and patients. The desire for radical change to the status of the profession that developed during the 1960s, and led ultimately to the publication of the Briggs Report, was not uniform. Evidence has shown that there was undoubtedly perceived to be a 'battle for the soul of nursing'. But the tide had turned. Those in power were now wedded to fundamental change.
