Catalogue description General Nursing Council for England and Wales: Registration: The Roll of Nurses

Applications for admission to the Register of Nurses could be accepted only from properly qualified nurses who had completed a three-year training course. There was a large group of second grade or assistant nurses with two years training who were therefore ineligible for registration. In November 1937, an Interdepartmental Committee on Nursing Services, chaired by the Earl of Athlone, recommended that the assistant nurse should be given a recognized status and placed on a roll under the control of the General Nursing Council. This recommendation was eventually embodied in the Nurses Act 1943 by which the General Nursing Council was to regulate the formation, maintenance and publication of the roll and to establish conditions of admission to and removal from the roll.

Unlike the register, the roll included male and female Assistant nurses on one list from the beginning. There was no provision in the 1943 Act for maintenance of the roll in several parts so that there could be no enrolment of assistant nurses working with mental patients. The Nurses Act 1964 gave the council power to make rules for the enrolment of nurses with experience in psychiatric nursing and two rolls were opened for mental nurses and nurses for the mentally subnormal.

In 1961 it was considered that the use of the term 'Assistant Nurse' was hindering recruitment and the Enrolled Nurses Rules Approval Instrument SI 1961/1519 changed the name to State Enrolled Nurse and the Roll of Assistant Nurses became the Roll of Nurses.