Uncertainty in the next era of professional regulation.

Abstract

Nursing regulation has always centred around the importance of protecting the public. In the early days, the battle for regulation was between the Royal British Nurses’ Association, which stood for high professional standards irrespective of the staffing needs of hospitals, and the College of Nursing, later to become the Royal College of Nursing, which was allied with hospital management and was prepared to pay attention to the staffing needs of the hospitals. Both groups wanted to influence any new council which was to be set up to regulate nursing. The Nurse Registration Act in 1919 did not create any greater unity between these professional organizations, but it officially established nursing as a recognized profession (Abel-Smith, 1960).