The under-used resource of historical research.

Nurse educationalists in Britain face the charge that the system is no longer producing nurses who are competent when they qualify. Research into these issues led to an historical approach, using life story and documentary analysis, to understanding how nurses from the 1940s and 1950s talked about nursing. This article by Janet Hargreaves considers the value of such an approach and argues that an understanding of how nursing was crafted in the past illuminates the present.