Is being a registered nursen a working class occupation

My DM was a nurse in WW2. If wasn’t working class then! Hard exams to take and many working class didn’t have the education to do it. Often it was grammar schools girls like my DM. With degrees and the nhs, anyone who qualifies for the degree can apply. Class is immaterial. It was never well paid but high salaries can be attained in the management and specialist posts.

Class if it exists is a set of shared values, I don't think it really applies to jobs.
I would say once upon a time nursing might have been thought if as working class, but because it is now a graduate only profession it certainly isn't!
I believe the classical professions were medicine, law, education and the priesthood.

Just realised I did not get to the point. There are many nurses who fall into a definition of 'working class' and several who are middle/upper middle class. I remember on my first ward one nurse being referred to as 'Bunty' as she was obviously from quite a genteel background. Nursing is now a degree route and a good and experienced nurse will be very skilled in their specialism after time. The entry level degree is not particularly demanding on an purely accademic level, but this does not mean it is easy.

Interesting, in most of the world (including the US, Australia, Canada, South Korea and Hong Kong) Nursing is seen as a very respectable career which requires an expensive post graduate Masters level degree.
It's just here in our NHS that nurses are often treated with utter disdain.

Well it's an occupation that can be done by anyone [with the skills and training) from any background. However, the m/c ( as judged by me!) people I know socially are solicitors, barristers, company directors, senior management, dentists, medical or management consultants etc. Not nurses.

I taught in a Fife secondary school. The girls (and some boys) who went into nursing were all working class kids. The Vic in Kirkcaldy is where most of them trained.

Class is so complicated in the UK. I trained as a nurse many years ago (although did not work as one for more than a couple of years before retraining). I went out with someone at the time who was training to be a nurse on one of the first nursing degree courses before it became the standard route. Very few people on that course came from a working class background and several years on most are hospital matrons, highly specialist, in research etc. I have continued to work alongside nurses in my new career. There is a huge difference between what is now band 5/6 and nurse specialist roles, for example.

Growing up in a very middle class, commuter town in the south east in the 1980s, I remember lots of my friends had a parent (always) who were nurses. I have a vivid memory of them chatting about one who was a community nurse looking down on the rest of them. One was a nursing sister in peadiatrics and the other worked in acute cardiology (both married to doctors).

Having gone back to work within the NHS in another role from 2006-2008 and since then having had frequent interactions in my current role, it remains the most hierarchical and out of touch workplace I have ever encountered.

My mum did her nursing training in the 1950s and she was definitely working class.

I remember her telling me that in those days it was common for some families to not want their daughters to go into nursing because it was seen as a very low-class thing to do.

I’m a nurse and consider myself to be middle class

Nursing is a degree educated profession now. So @Namechangean is right.

Though on the other hand I have a few friends and acquaintances who have married/partnered with men who aren't degree/degree equivalent educated and do well paid WC jobs.

I disagree. Background, accent, family wealth, education etc has a lot to do with class. You can change lanes but mostly people keep the trappings of the class they were born into.

In the UK? Everything. Currently our Labour government has decided ordinary children shouldn't learn Latin as it's elitist. I can't imagine anything more elitist than that - but the main point I am making is that if you want to get on knowing who Cinna was is a surprisingly great help. (Clue: ploughs and Mr Boris Johnson)

I always think of the guy who used to run Pimilico Plumbers or premiership footballers when it comes down to class and money in the UK.

In the UK class is about education so they are almost all WC even though they are millionaires, there as in the US they are MC. The only way their class would change in the UK is if they got a title.

What makes you think the working classes were not oppressed before the industrial revolution?😊

Depends were you are from in the country.

I am from London.

I know when I was ferrying one of my nephews to look at universities outside London because his parents couldn't, we met people who were going to do nursing degrees. They had a complete mixed bag of backgrounds. My nephew is in his mid-20s.

On a related note, my sibling at A-level or maybe 1st year uni sociology did a thing very similar about police. Can you be a long-serving PC on £40k and still be WC? Because you're WC by background but by salary (where we're from) that makes you MC. But then can you not have a WC PC? When does it change?

Interesting! Traditionally it's a working class role. I'm not sure how much a degree changes that... because for sure having a degree used to make you MC, but now when 50% go to uni...

Anecdata: all the nurses I know - from their 20s to retired - are WC or wealthy, I don't know any MC nurses!

Maybe historically over the last few decades it looked a bit different? Or maybe it depends where you're from in the country 🤷

I have SILs who are or were nurses before they retired.

They were all privately educated at some point unlike the "oinks" of my brothers they married. One had a titled father.

Nurses now have degrees so probably middle class. Some are also consultants and highly specialised.

I think nursing is quite classless, my mum was a nursing student in the 70s and from a lower middle class background. All the other student nurses were middle class too, a lot of them far posher than my mum! It was considered a respectable career for a middle class girl back then and lots of them did it in order to find a doctor to marry!

These days I would say it's a middle class job because it requires a degree and is skilled, but people from working and middle class backgrounds will become nurses so you'll get a different answer depending who you ask.

It’s not about accents, scouse people can be middle class. Also my understanding is that doctors don’t get to choose where they work until they become consultants. While they are still in their training years they are sent all around the country. Which could account for the different accents in Liverpool. I’m sure there’s plenty of doctors with scouse accents, especially because some working class people become doctors too

I don’t think it’s about the type of people who go in to nurses, it’s about what class they become. Other factors play a part in class but occupation is a big one. So if someone working class becomes a nurse, ends up on a decent wage, married to someone at the same level and so are able to buy a house, they’d be bringing up middle class kids, rather than working class

Why would it be any class? There are people from all different classes if you want to define it doing it so what in itself makes it one or the other?

Nurses are working class. Doctors are middle class. Typically. You can tell by the accent and appearance and body language and first name. Of course this is not always the case and there are many exceptions but I live in Liverpool and most nurses have Scouse accents and most doctors do not.

It would be a relatively upper WC person who became a nurse though, there will be an additional layer of people "below" nurses who wouldn't aspire to a degree so would do unskilled work.

All this is of course deeply unfair and does not reflect people's true worth or abilities, it's all a result of the oppression of the working classes during the industrial revolution. It's probably also different in other regions but in the north west I think this is true. Posh nurses probably go for more upmarket areas!