Be good, sweet maid, and let who can be clever: a counter reformation in English nursing education?

The bulk of nursing education in England moved gradually into higher education in the 1990s. There were debates over the wisdom of this move and in late 1998 and early 1999, it seemed that nursing education might return to the NHS. There was considerable discussion in both the nursing and the general press. In this paper I concentrate on the latter, and analyse the media discussion of nursing at that time, in particular its emphasis on bodily care and excretion, and relate this discussion to the literature on the management of pollution in nursing, the gendered nature of caring, and the division of labour in nursing.