#RCN100 Celebrating 100 years of the Royal College of Nursing

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Dear future nurses

An email to nursing staff in 2116.

The skill of nursing staff in 2016 would be unrecognisable to our founders a century ago. But fast forward 100 years, and what will nurses in 2116 think about us?

Will they marvel at an era of incurable disease, or question why we gathered patients into big buildings called hospitals? Or perhaps they will recognise the compassion of nursing staff in 2016, and reflect that nothing had changed at all.

We wanted our members to explore nursing in 2016, in the form of an email to the nurses of the future.

A selection of the emails we received were printed and stored in a sealed box in our archives – with the instruction ‘not to be opened until 27 March 2116’, our 200th anniversary.

These emails will form an important historical record of nursing skill in 2016, and the feelings and motivations of the people doing the job.

Page last updated - 03/08/2019