Two of our nurses took a step back in time today (Thursday 28 June) – modelling nursing uniforms from the past, one from 1918 and one from the 1950s.

The period costumes were kindly lent to us by Angels Costumiers, after costume designer Rosalind Ebbutt, who has worked for the BBC and is currently filming the third series of ITV period show Victoria, tracked them down to make a special appearance at our annual Nursing, Midwifery and Allied Health Professionals (AHP) Conference.

The 1950s uniform is modelled above by our Lead Nurse for Critical Care, Bev Thomas (left), while our Emergency Department Sister Lucy Randolph (right) slipped into the 1918 version.

The conference is taking place today at Queen’s Hospital and we were also lucky to have a rare brass lamp which belonged to Florence Nightingale on display.

She is thought to have used the lamp to write nursing notes after the Crimean War.

Jane Cummings, Chief Nurse Officer for England, was one of the speakers at our conference and gave an inspiring speech this morning.

Also on today’s agenda is a look back over the last 70 years of nursing, ahead of the NHS’s 70^th birthday next week, and our Chief Nurse Kathryn Halford OBE has spoken about our nursing, midwifery and AHP strategy, and what we’ve achieved over the last year