However, as recently as 30 years ago, many prisoners would never have encountered a registered nurse.

This exhibition explores the fascinating history of healthcare in prisons, from the work of early reformers like Elizabeth Fry to the vital contribution that nurses make to prisoner health today. Discover the experience of suffragettes, force-fed in Scottish prisons, the formation of secure hospitals like The State Hospital in Carstairs, and artwork created by prisoners at HMP Eastwood Park and HMP Warren Hill.

If visiting in person, the exhibition is open Monday to Thursday from 10am until 4pm.

If you can't visit the exhibition in person, check out the online exhibition.

The venue is wheelchair accessible. If you have any questions or accessibility needs, please contact us on scotland.library@rcn.org.uk or 0131 662 6163/4.

Talks at the launch event explored how prison nurses bring a wide range of specialist skills to provide compassionate care in uniquely challenging environments. Hear about the history and development of prison nursing, through to transforming health care services in today's prisons and what it is like working as a nurse in prisons and what nurses do in different nursing roles.

The NHS in Scotland has committed becoming a net-zero health service by 2040 but there is a long way to go. As the largest part of the health and care workforce, it is crucial that nursing becomes more sustainable.

This exhibition explored the history of air pollution and of recycling and re-use in nursing and shows how talented nursing teams are taking climate action today – from green social prescribing to developing sustainable nursing tools. Highlights include redesigned and repurposed medical gowns from PPE Refashioned, AHRC-funded research led by Prof Katherine Townsend, Nottingham Trent University.

Shining a light - a history of nursing support work

Discover the fascinating history of nursing support work and celebrate the contribution that nursing support workers continue to make today.

From Victorian asylums and wartime volunteers to nursing assistants and care workers today, this exhibition uncovered the long history and diversity of nursing support work.

Exhibits included a handmade magazine created by a young Agatha Christie when she was a volunteer nurse in the First World War, on loan from the British Psychoanalytical Society Archive. Never previously displayed, until this exhibition, the magazine gives a vivid insight into the resilience and camaraderie of volunteer nurses at a time of national emergency.  

The exhibition shone a light on the personal stories of nursing support workers today, celebrating the contribution they continue to make – in hospitals, care homes, clinics and communities.

Other objects on display included items from Bethlem Museum of the Mind, Chester Riverside Museum, the Christie Archive Trust, Glenside Museum, the Red Cross Museum and Archives, and Barts Health NHS Trust Archives.

Shining a Light was put together in close collaboration with a group of our member volunteers who are support workers or work closely with support workers, and our Nursing Support Worker Committee.

Watch our exhibition launch

Watch how we celebrated the contribution of nursing support workers in Scotland's health and care services with our Nursing Support Worker,  RCN Scotland Nurse of the Year Awards, finalists.

Stories from hospitals back home during the First World War

Our panel of speakers explored how, in the First World War, volunteers provided nurses with vital support as they cared for sick and wounded soldiers in hospitals back home.

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 our 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 the 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 exhibition
• Finalists in the Children's Nursing & Midwifery Award at our 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 our 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 celebrated the incredible work of Scotland’s nursing staff working with children, young people and new parents.

Hear from three of the finalists from our 2024 RCN Scotland Nurse of the Year Awards, 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 exhibition launch, 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®.

It is a specialist part of the wider family of nursing and takes place in all sorts of environments.

This exhibition traced the fascinating origins and journey of learning disability nursing over the last 150 years.

The story starts in the 1800s, when people with learning disabilities were often kept away from society in workhouses or large institutions known as asylums. Today, many people with learning disabilities live independently, some with specialist support. Everyone is different and all individuals have unique needs. For this reason, learning disability nurses work in a variety of places: in the community, hospitals and hospices, in mental healthcare settings and within prisons.

In fact, nurses work anywhere people with learning disabilities are.