Winifred Emily Hector

FRCN
Born1909
Died2002
OccupationNurse educator
Employer(s)Manchester Royal Infirmary, St Bartholomew's Hospital

Winifred Hector - from her autobiography

Winifred Emily Hector FRCN (21 December 1909 — 14 September 2002) was an English nurse and textbook author. She played a significant part in introducing modern curriculum and teaching methods to British nursing education.[1]

Early life and education

Winifred Emily Hector was born at Taunton in Somerset, the daughter of Sidney Charles Hector and Beatrice Dugdale Hector. Her father was an engine driver on the Great Western Railway. She attended Bishop Fox's School in Taunton, and completed 2 years of undergraduate study in English at Bedford College, London. However her near-sightedness ended her academic studies, so she turned her attention to nursing, as a student at St. Bartholomew's Hospital.[2] Much later in life, she was awarded a Master of Philosophy (MPhil) degree at City University London, with research on the life of Ethel Gordon Fenwick, SRN 1, the first nurse on the General Nursing Council register 1921 [a ref] and a founder of the International Council of Nurses.[3]

Career

Hector trained as a nurse at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London where she was "taught by a very frosty tutor", with a very formal and rigid approach. [a ref].

Hector was in charge of nurses' preliminary training at the Manchester Royal Infirmary at the beginning of World War II. She then ran a surgical ward at St. Bartholomew's Hospital during the London Blitz, treating mainly acute injuries of bombing victims.[4] She moved into teaching, taking the position of senior tutor at the war's end.[5] She established "one of the first university courses for nurses," at City, University of London, beginning in 1968.[6]

Textbooks by Winifred Hector included Modern Gynaecology and Obstetrics For Nurses (1956, with John Howkins, revised 1963 and 1974 with Gordon Bourne),[7] Modern Nursing: Theory and Practice (1960),[8] A Textbook of Medicine for Nurses (1967, with Gordon Hamilton Fairley),[9] and Nursing Care for the Dying Patient (1982).[10] She also wrote an autobiography, Memoirs of a Somerset Woman (1997), and a book about nursing for lay readers, The Role of the Nurse (1977).[11] Such was the success of her publications that in 1970 her publisher Heinemann hosted a champagne lunch in her honour at the Ritz.

In 1964 Hector was a member of the influential Platt Committee on Nursing Education, led by Harry Platt which published in 1964.[12]

She retired from St. Bartholomew's in 1970. For a decade after she retired, she was the lecturer in charge of the 2 year Sister Tutor's Diploma Course at Queen Elizabeth College. until the final cohort completed in 1980. In 1970, she was one of the founding members of the board of the Medical Recording Service, a body founded to support quality film and audio productions for medical education.[13] In 1976, she was made a Fellow of the Royal College of Nursing.[14] In 1978, she was script adviser on a series of ten films for nursing education.[15]

Winifred Hector died in 2002, after several years of ill health, in London, aged 91 years.[2]

References

  1. ↑ Sue Thackray, "Winifred Hector: Pioneering Reformer of Nursing Education" The Guardian (1 October 2002).
  2. 1 2 Jane Brooks, "Hector, Winifred Emily (1909–2002)" Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press 2006).
  3. ↑ Winifred Hector, The Work of Mrs. Bedford Fenwick and the Rise of Professional Nursing (Royal College of Nursing 1973).
  4. ↑ Barbara Mortimer, Sisters: Heroic True Stories of the Nurses of World War II (Random House 2013): 98. ISBN 9781448184132
  5. ↑ "A Special Study Time for Nurses" The Age (28 March 1961): 6.
  6. ↑ Laurence Dopson, "Obituary Winifred Hector" Nursing Standard 17(2)(25 September 2002): 31.
  7. ↑ Winifred Hector and Gordon Bourne, Modern Gynaecology and Obstetrics for Nurses (Heinemann Medical 1974). ISBN 9780433142102
  8. ↑ Winifred Hector, Modern Nursing Theory and Practice (Heinemann Medical 1968).
  9. ↑ Winifred Hector and G. Hamilton-Fairley, A Textbook of Medicine for Nurses (Heinemann Medical 1973). ISBN 9780433142089
  10. ↑ Winifred Hector, Nursing Care for the Dying Patient (Heinemann Medical 1982). ISBN 9780433142195
  11. ↑ Winifred Hector, The Role of the Nurse (BBC Books, 1977). ISBN 9780563161356
  12. ↑ "A reform of nursing education first report of a special committee". RCN Digital Archive. 1964.
  13. ↑ John and Valerie Graves, "The Medical Recording Service and the Medical Audiovisual Library" in John Fry, R. J. F. H. Pinsent, eds., A History of the Royal College of General Practitioners: The First 25 Years (Spring Science and Business Media 2012): 106-107. ISBN 9789401159159
  14. ↑ "RCN Fellows and Honorary Fellows". Royal College of Nursing. Retrieved 7 November 2022.
  15. ↑ "Winifred Hector filmography" British Film Institute.
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