Oral History
Page author - Carol McCubbin
Oral History provides an historical resource which provides historians with a valuable source of information about a range of subjects that may not be represented in the written record. For example, it can be a useful source of knowledge about nursing techniques and development of clinical practice and also about nursing as an activity or skill. Oral History can inform us what is was like at different times to be a nurse or to receive nursing care
There is much discussion about whether an oral history collection is an historical source in its own right or a secondary source, and about whether it can substantiate or refute other sources.
Oral Historians have approached the discipline from a psychological stance and they argue that the events which we experience with most intensity will be more elaborately encoded by a system of memory which ensures that we recall what is most important to us.
The following papers are available from the 'Nurses Voices' Oral History Centre collection at the University of Kingston
- Ethical issues when working with volunteers -University of Bristol
- Importance of Oral History in recording nursing perspectives on changes in neuroscience nursing - BANN conference Edinburgh
- Elements of methodology arising from using insiders to conduct interviews - RCN History Conference Manchester
- Oral History Democratises the past? UK Centre for History of Nursing and Midwifery Manchester
- Methodological issues in researching the past - University of Sussex Life History Conference
- Healing Memories - International Oral History Society Conference, Sydney
- Mother came too! RCN Nursing History Conference
- Interdisciplinary Approaches to Oral History research - Bangor University
News item
The Nurses' Voices research team created an oral history of nursing and patients experiences at St. Thomas' and Guys Hospital. An exhibition called ‘Hospital Voices' based on the collection demonstrates how through the creation of a new historical resource, which in itself tells the untold story of some modern ‘heroes', can be used in a museum setting to develop an exhibition and produce a dialogue with our times and the story of a nursing legend
