ABSTRACT
In 1880, John Braxton-Hicks, the noted Guy's Hospital obstetrician, described the three nursing systems then in existence: the ward system, the oldest and most prevalent, and the one he thought the best; the training institution, and the Anglican Sisters' centralized system. This chapter examines the ward system which the Guy's doctors so ardently defended later in the century. The earliest reorganization of hospital nursing, developing over the first half of the nineteenth century in response to the more active role which doctors were playing in the teaching hospitals. It was also known as the sister system' because it made the ward sister it's lynch pin, changing her role from that of domestic servant to doctor's assistant. The ward system developed first at St Thomas, partly because the wards were large and required two nurses, one of whom had to be in charge. Distressed by the quality of their nurses, the Westminster governors established a nursing committee in 1838.
