Felicity Stockwell: more from the RCN Bulletin interview with the nursing researcher

Felicity Stockwell wrote her seminal work ‘The unpopular patient’ 40 years ago. Here she talks about the start of her work in nursing when she never imagined that a career in research lay ahead

“My mother died at the beginning of World War Two and after returning from the war, my father - a vicar - was placed in a small farming village in Oxfordshire. It was a lonely upbringing that included attending 12 different schools and to be honest I was pretty hopeless at everything other than French and biology.

When I passed the School Certificate, which everyone thought I would fail, the result was considered to be a mistake! So, aged 16, my father found me a job in the local bank.

Work in the bank was lonely and boring, and after some months, I heard that a school friend had gone to nurse at a local hospital, and was going to have an illegitimate baby. This was the 1940s so this was shocking news, but all I could think was that she must have met people to be in this situation.

I felt very isolated in my home and work so the following day I bought notepaper and wrote to the matron of the local hospital – the Wingfield Hospital, to ask if she would consider me for a nursing post. My parents discouraged me from applying but I was really pleased when I was invited for interview. My father described nursing as a ‘dreadful occupation’ and warned me that I would spend all my life emptying bedpans.

I was determined to start nurse training and was really pleased when I was accepted to train in orthopaedics. I thought this was my opportunity to meet people but I was very shy and naïve. I didn’t know what a ‘bunny burner’ was (for the disposal of sanitary towels) and when we had to give a urine sample, I didn’t know what urine was!

As we were asked to sew name tapes onto our uniforms, I spotted an academic timetable on the wall. I genuinely wondered if I was in the right place as I didn’t expect to have to attend any further education classes.

I was influenced by a lovely sister-tutor who recognised when I was struggling academically and took me under her wing; and I helped one of the other girls and this taught me that teaching a subject to others helps your own understanding.

But I still felt that others in the class were cleverer than me and taking the weekly Saturday morning tests was a real struggle. I found the work physically and psychologically hard and it was frightening. It was a time when diseases like polio were prevalent and we had to be very careful to walk the tightrope between being friendly and patients taking advantage of us. But we were lucky that we all had each other for support. In fact I’ve stayed in touch with many of the people I met during my time at The Wingfield Hospital. We were at a reunion celebrating fifty years in nursing on 11 September 2011 when the planes hit the World Trade Centre in New York, and now another 10 years have passed. 

Moving on

In 1954, I chose to do my general training at St Thomas' Hospital and on completing it I didn’t think that I would be offered a job there so was really pleased when the matron offered me a staff nurse post in the psychiatric outpatient department.

This was great news because it meant that I would have every evening and weekend off for a whole year. This gave me the opportunity to join a local debating group and, after hearing a request for a volunteer to talk to some nurses about research, I found myself invited to go to the RCN’s first ever conference for newly qualified nurses. 

There, I was given the job of thanking the conference speaker and explaining to everyone the importance of encouraging nursing research – even though, at this stage, I didn’t know anything about it myself!
On completing our training we were expected to join the RCN – for the insurance – but I did not give any thought to participating in anything.

So it was a surprise to me when the speakers at this conference stressed how important it was for me to go to the local RCN branch meetings, and one of them offered to take me along the following week. I was one of the youngest there but I was made so welcome – and they always asked my opinion – even though they were all so much more senior than me.

I became a regular and active branch member and I was thrown right into the middle of nursing politics and found myself getting involved in RCN committees. This provided me with introductions to the key personnel in the nursing world.

Working in mental health

I developed my career in mental health, working in a variety of roles but I soon learned that patients with mental health problems need to have socialising opportunities and activities to help restore their self esteem.

I worked with William Sargant, a consultant who was an instigator of the understanding that the wards needed to be a socialising community. Nurses were seen as companions and enablers. Alongside the treatments we were encouraged to generate a friendly atmosphere and encourage all sorts of social activity.

When I was given my ward sister post, I was pleased that the staff on my wards were all general student nurses. They hadn’t had mental health training and were happy to organise activities and play games with the patients. This was producing excellent outcomes because inside everyone there is a lonely person who just needs friendly companionship that helps to enhance their self-esteem, and, because it reduces stress, it ensured that treatments and other nursing skills were more effective.

This very modern and transparent way of working was so important to me but I initially had no idea about how I could tell the others about it.  I tried to address this problem by taking a two-year course to become a nurse tutor. 

This was very interesting but proved not to be a pathway that led to changes in the mainstream psychiatric hospitals. However, my first tutor post had been in a general hospital, and this was to lead to my eventual participation in the Study of Nursing Care project.

Back then, clinical tutoring was being implemented and so some of my teaching took place at a table in the centre of the wards, and every week I would ask if the students if they thought that any of their patients were mentally ill.

This is when I first discovered that there was such a thing as a difficult patient. I’d ask them to discreetly have a chat with these patients and report the outcomes to me the following week. But I found it absolutely infuriating to find that because they had done what I asked and the patients had become amenable, they could not accept that it was their friendly interaction that had caused the change.

I was still attending RCN meetings and this gave me the opportunity to discuss how I could investigate this further. I became part of the embryonic RCN research group and eventually applied for a position on the Study of Nursing Care research project. I had to complete intelligence tests, which were daunting, and had three gruelling interviews, and despite the fact that I was considered over-qualified, over-experienced, too expensive and was from a mental health background, I got in by the skin of my teeth.”

The rest is history.