STUDENT nurses from across Britain gathered in Glasgow in May 1954 for their association’s annual meeting - the first time it had been staged outside London since the body’s formation, 30 years earlier. This newspaper photographed a group of student nurses after a service at Glasgow Cathedral.

There, they had been reminded of the ‘right attitude’ to the menial work that the job often entailed. The Rev Dr Nevile Davidson said they had to do all kinds of little menial tasks. Many of these were hard and tiring, and some were positively unpleasant. If through all these trials a nurse could contrive to keep calm and unruffled, it would help communicate a sense of quiet and assurance to the patients in her ward.

Read more: Herald Diary

Nursing had scarcely been considered even a respectable calling at the time of Florence Nightingale, he added - “No well-brought-up girl thought of it as a career.” But today, “great hospitals throughout the land were regarded as among the most valuable of all institutions, and the nursing profession was universally honoured.”