Biography

"I learned a lot as a doubter. I have never been very keen to accept things at their face value just because they have always been done that way…probably I am just a doubter by nature…"

Royal College of Nursing Archives T/252/1 [C/300/8/3/1]: Oral History Interview with Lisbeth Hockey, 4th October 2000.

Lisbeth Hockey was born in 1918 in Austria. In 1936 she began studying Medicine at the University of Graz but had to leave both her studies and Austria in 1938 due to the increasingly dangerous political situation at the time. She came to England and over the course of the following twenty years trained and worked in the UK as a nurse, fever nurse, midwife, district nurse and health visitor. She also worked as the Administer of the North London District Nursing Association.

In the 1960s whilst working as a Tutor and Research Officer at the Queen's Institute for District Nursing (QIDN) in London, Lisbeth became increasingly interested in the potential of nursing research and forged a pioneering career in this area, becoming one of the world's leading nurse researchers. She initiated the UK's first department of community nursing research at the QIDN and published a number of ground-breaking research studies.

Her career culminated in her position as the first Director of the Nursing Research Unit at The University of Edinburgh (1971-1982), the first such unit to be established in a European university. Lisbeth gained her PhD in 1979 and received many honorary awards including an OBE. She presented papers and key-note speeches at conferences across the world. Lisbeth Hockey died in 2004, age 85, having made a huge difference to the credibility and perception of nursing research, both in the UK and internationally.

For a more detailed biographical paper covering Lisbeth Hockey's life and work, please click on the link below:

Lisbeth Hockey Biography - Pdf

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