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Abstract
December 2005 marks thirty years since the end of the first experimental psychosexual seminar training scheme provided specifically for nurses in the United Kingdom. This pilot study, which ran from January 1974 until December 1975, was funded by the Department of Health and Social Security and run under the auspices of the Family Planning Association. It provided psychosexual training for three groups of nurses, midwives and health visitors who worked predominantly in contraception services. Drawing on archival sources, this paper describes the pilot study and reviews its contribution to two subsequent developments in psychosexual care provided by nurses: the creation, by the then Joint Board of Clinical Nursing Studies, of a short course on the principles of psychosexual counselling for qualified nurses and midwives (Course 985); and the foundation of psychosexual nursing based on Balint-style seminar training. The aim of such training in psychosexual nursing is not to turn nurses into psychosexual counsellors – although some seminar-trained nurses do work in this role – but to enable them to recognise and respond constructively to the psychosexual issues encountered in their everyday practice.
Acknowledgements
I should like to thank the staff at the National Archives, Kew, and Archives and Manuscripts, Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine, 183 Euston Road, London, for their assistance. My thanks also go to Mrs Doreen Clifford and Mrs Jane Selby for providing many documents pertinent to the history of psychosexual nursing. I am also grateful to Mrs Clifford, Mrs Selby, Mr John Elder, Dr Norma Daykin, Dr David Evans and the independent reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.