Dr. Sheila Collins: Leading figure in nurse education

Sheila Collins was the guru of nurse education in the 1970s and 1980s. Whenever a new policy came out or an educational issue was debated, hers was always one of the opinions canvassed.

She recalled meeting Richard Crossman, then the Secretary of State for Health, in a basement room in the House of Commons “around a table too small for the delegation”. She was there to emphasise the need for considering the nursing resources in the NHS, prior to the setting up of the Committee on Nursing. She served on this committee, chaired by Professor Asa Briggs, from 1970-72.

Collins spent two years speaking to conferences, meetings and groups on the committee’s recommendations on the quality and nature of nurse training.

Along with Winifred Hector, her opposite number at St Bartholomew’s Hospital (Collins was at the London Hospital), she secretly created the first degree courses in nursing.

Collins originally intended to go to university and become a teacher, but, faced with the Munich crisis of 1938 and the threat of war, decided instead to take up nursing, like others in her family. She trained at the Royal London Hospital (then the London Hospital), her entry delayed for a month because of the outbreak of war in 1939.

After qualifying as a state registered nurse, Collins became a sister and started her educational career as a tutor to other nurses at Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital.

She returned to the London in 1953 and became Principal Tutor in 1960.

She was much involved in the planning and commissioning of the new Princess Alexandra School of Nursing which opened in 1967, incorporating other schools of nursing with that of the London as a result of reorganisation.

Her final post was as Director of Nursing Education in Tower Hamlets.

With all the reorganisations and changes of title she once remarked: “I have always felt as though I have been interviewed and selected three times for the same post – the only difference each time being an extended responsibility in geographical extent and student numbers, not in the content of the educational role!”

Although a keen member of the National Student Nurses Association, Collins only became an active member of the Royal College of Nursing as a sister tutor. In 1968, she was the first sister tutor to be elected chairman of council of the Royal College of Nursing – the “nurses’ trade union”. For seven years she also chaired its United Kingdom Education Committee. The Royal College of Nursing elected her a Fellow of the RCN in 1977.

Collins also sat on the English National Board and the UK Central Council, two nurses’ regulatory bodies.

She was the UK member of the Advisory Committee on Nursing of the European Union and chaired the seminar on education at the International Council of Nurses conference in Los Angeles in 1981. She was vicechairman of Bromley Health Authority and chairman of St Joseph’s Hospice, Bromley. In 1975 she was appointed an OBE.

A tall, grey-haired woman, always smartly dressed, Collins had a sense of humour but it did not always emerge.

She was not particularly easy to get to know, either: members of the Royal College of Nursing council found her somewhat stringent in her manner.

She was, however, always on the look out for potential talent and encouraged its development in nurses. She examined everything in detail and was a perfectionist. She was a devote Roman Catholic.

Her enthusiasm for education included furthering her own. While running a major nursing school, she studied for an Open University degree, and her evaluation of the first six experimental courses in nurse education under Project 2000, submitted for a MSc degree at the University of Surrey after her retirement, was deemed so good that she was awarded a PhD.

She also spent her time painting, cooking, knitting, and playing the organ.

Her interest in history and her lifelong association with the London led her to write The Royal London Hospital: a Brief History as well as a history of the Royal London League of Nurses.

With Edith Parker, her successor as head of nurse education there, she wrote a history of nursing and midwifery education at the London.

Laurence Dopson

Dr Sheila Margaret Collins, nurse educationalist: born Conway 28 August 1921; Director of Nursing Education, Tower Hamlets Health Authority; Chairman, Royal College of Nursing; member, Briggs Committee on Nursing; OBE, 1975; died Farnborough 13 March 2009.