2023 Elsie Stephenson Memorial Lecture: "Reimagining nursing: then and now"

Elsie Stephenson was appointed by the University of Edinburgh in 1956 as Director of its newly-established nursing studies unit. Over its first decade, until her premature death in 1967, she led its expansion into a fully-fledged university department and its introduction of the UK’s first integrated programme leading to a degree and nursing registration.

Alison Tierney started on that programme in 1966 and so, through her first year as an undergraduate nursing student, Elsie Stephenson was head of the department. Just a year, but long enough to leave a deep and lasting impression on Alison, in particular the idea that the nursing profession must be imaginative and forward-looking as well as focusing on the here and now.

Alison will develop this theme in her lecture, first by looking back at ways in which Elsie Stephenson and her colleagues in Nursing Studies were envisaging and shaping a better future for nurse education and nursing at the time. And then, looking forward, she will argue that reimagining nursing now, but even more radically, is an urgent task for the profession in the face of the challenges for health services now and in the coming decades.

 

Brief biography of speaker

Alison Tierney is now retired. The Department of Nursing Studies at the University of Edinburgh was her base for over 30 years, including a 10-year period as Director of Scotland’s Nursing Research Unit and culminating in promotion to a Personal Chair of Nursing Research and a term of office as Head of Department. She then moved to The University of Adelaide in South Australia as Professor and Head of Clinical Nursing to lead teaching and research expansion in that department.

Alison also is known in connection with the Roper-Logan-Tierney textbook ‘The elements of nursing’; through her research publications; as an Editor in Chief of Journal of Advanced Nursing; for her contributions to the Royal College of Nursing, of which she is a Fellow; and to a range of strategic initiatives nationally and internationally in pursuit of the development of research in nursing.

In 2002 Alison was awarded a CBE for services to nursing research and education. She has several honorary degrees, including an honorary doctorate conferred in 2018 by her alma mater, The University of Edinburgh.