Exhibitions in Scotland

Children aren’t just “small adults”. They have different health and care needs, which change as they grow and develop.

This exhibition explored the history of children and young people’s nursing – from the first children’s hospitals in the 1800s to the development of family-centred care.

Nursing for young people has often been ahead of the curve and influenced adult care. Yet this has not always been acknowledged, and children’s nurses have had to fight for recognition of their specialist role. This exhibition showed that by recognising this past and by listening to and valuing young people’s voices, we can better prepare for our future.

The exhibition was co-created with Royal College of Nursing members, many of whom work in children and young people’s nursing or have in the past. The volunteer team was involved in every stage of the exhibition from research, to writing exhibition panels, to exhibition design.

Objects on display included items from Bethlem Museum of the Mind, the Foundling Museum, the Old Operating Theatre Museum and Herb Garret, Southwark Heritage Centre, and objects and stories loaned by nurses past and present.

The exhibition also included artwork by pupils at St. Columba’s Primary School in Annan, Dumfries & Galloway, Trinity School in Carlisle, Eday Community School on the Island of Eday in Orkney and Westray Junior High School on the island of Westray, Orkney

Watch out launch event for this exhibition with speakers including:

• Sue Ward, former Group Deputy Chief Nurse and part of the group of volunteers who curated this RCN Library and Archives’ History of Children and Young People’s nursing exhibition
• Finalists in the Children's Nursing & Midwifery Award at the 2022 RCN Scotland Nurse of the Year Awards, the Capella Team. A children’s community nursing team in NHS Dumfries and Galloway explore how children and their families living within a remote and rural area receive the most appropriate and peaceful end of life care in the absence of a specialist palliative care team
• Brenda Kirk, Highly Commended Finalist for the Children's Nursing & Midwifery Award at last year’s RCN Scotland Nurse of the Year Awards who explores how community children’s nursing care for children with a disability enables improvements in health outcomes.

Watch our second event of this exhibition series which celebrates the incredible work of Scotland’s nursing staff working with children, young people and new parents.

Hear from three of the finalists from our recent RCN Scotland Nurse of the Year Awards 2024, as they provide an insight into the work that led to their nomination and recognition.

This event focused on the escalating crisis of recruitment and retention in nursing, nationally and globally with a panel of RCN Fellows examining the causes and effects of this crisis. Hear ideas about what the profession itself can do to attract and keep new nursing recruits, and when we need to push for government support.

Yet this pandemic, like others before it, exposed the risks taken by nursing professionals at work. Over 850 healthcare workers are thought to have died after contracting COVID-19 in 2020. The pandemic was not equal, impacting on some staff more than others, particularly those from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds.

The risk of infection occurred everywhere that nursing took place: whether in the community, in care homes, in mental health or in maternity wards.

This exhibition looked behind the masks, to explore the thoughts, feelings and experiences of nursing staff during COVID-19 and past pandemics.

Learning Hub, RCN Scotland Headquarters (Edinburgh), 42 South Oswald Road, Edinburgh, EH9 2HH

Nursing staff played a crucial role in caring for people during the COVID-19 pandemic. This video shares some of the personal and professional challenges nursing staff faced during 2020 and 2021. The quotes used in the film as real lived experiences voiced by actors.

Watch the launch of our new exhibition revealing the real experiences of nursing during the COVID-19 pandemic and past pandemics. Hear from Professor Christine Hallett and Amanda Gwinnup on the parallels and differences between nursing during COVID-19 and the 1918 Flu Pandemic, and from Professor Jason Leitch CBE, National Clinical Director of Healthcare Quality and Strategy at the Scottish Government on innovations from the pandemic that may shape future pandemic responses and what has been learnt from COVID-19. At the event we also had a script reading by China Plate Theatre of Humans Not Heroes and view a new short film reflecting the lived experience of nursing staff in Scotland during COVID-19 gathered using SenseMaker®.

 

 

Learning disabilities professionals explain what we can learn from the experiences of people with a learning disability in the past and more recent history of learning disability nursing, and explore how care for people with learning disabilities has shifted over time with reflections on learning disability nursing today.

What is it like working as a learning disability nurse? And what do such nurses do? Watch this recording of a panel of learning disability nurses discussing these questions and more at RCN Scotland HQ in Edinburgh.

Learning disability nurses help people of all ages with learning disabilities to maintain their health and wellbeing and to live their lives as fully and independently as possible. Join our finalists in the Learning Disability Nursing Category of our RCN Scotland Nurse of the Year Awards for an evening of celebration and discussion.  These nursing staff have succeeded in raising standards of care for their patients and clients and have made an outstanding contribution to person-centred care, innovation and high quality services that make a difference.