Is being a registered nursen a working class occupation

[BubbleIceTea]

I've spent the morning reading through the Lucy Letby press conference thread, 40 pages long.
In the thread, one poster has stated that registered nurses are working class, in a working class occupation.
Is this true?
I'm shocked by this.
I've always regarded trained registered nursing as a resolutely middle class occupation.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I work with lots of nurses - I would say it's a real mix. But like teaching it's a female dominated profession and thus has a lower status. Nursing has always been female dominated but both teaching and medicine have become female dominated in the last century and there has been wage stagnation and status degradation as the percentage of women goes up.

Which is sad and a real reminder that even in 2025 society is not truly equal.

I’m a registered nurse practitioner in ICU, masters degree, husband a higher earner 100K+. Financially stable. Still consider myself working class, as does my husband. Born and raised in a council scheme that our parents still live in. I think class is more to do with identity and upbringing. I’m proud to be working class. Couldn’t imagine describing myself as middle class.

Just to add… I can imagine that my children will identify more as middle class due to their more privileged upbringing. I think class is more to do with the culture of how you’re raised not the money in the bank or the job you’re in.

I was a registered nurse for 30 yrs and if I had to put myself in a class I’d say middle . I agree with the pp that it is about the culture of your upbringing . I had a SAH mum and an accountant dad , went to grammar school and had horses .

Think it crosses both boundaries actually, some of my most impressive colleagues were from working class backgrounds regardless of where they’d place themselves now.

Barristers? Judges?
I don't think nurses, either, historically or present. St Thomas' Hospital, for example, when it was a Voluntary Hospital before the NHS positively prided itself on only taking "gels" from "good families".....

So was my grandmother and all her sisters - but they weren't grammar school girls, and all left school at 12 or 14 (the school leaving age went up), worked for 4 or 5 years, and then trained starting at 18. The studying (done in their "spare time" from the wards) was tough, and the work unrelentingly hard, but I don't think a long or extensive pre-education was a requirement.

If we leave that filthy word class out of it…..people who care become nurses, people who connect and use their technical expertise to help people get well.

There were always different routes to qualify and different ways to enter the profession. Working class girls without the opportunity to avail themselves an education were brought on in-house. They did an education alongside their nursing studies which is remarkable. Aptitude and and initiative were found in bucketloads amongst working class girls and plenty of what my mother would call nouse and staying power.

I’m starting to think we don’t really have working class and middle anymore as separate.

So now for me its non working class (people who don’t work and are not wealthy), working/ middle has merged, then we have the elite (people who may or may not work but certainly don’t need to and are wealthy).

Vocational careers can't be labelled in the class system surely. Like nuns or priests or teachers who defines this class business.
There's no distinction between earnings these days as many skilled workers are extremely highly paid. Industries have changed massively.

Yeah but the minimum wage makes sure that many working class and hard working class just can not progress. Class of all kinds tries to keep people down …the poor are definitely much poorer even if they are working. Much less social mobility and life aspiration in that strata. This affects life expectancy in the end by as much as ten years still in the 20th century. This is indeed a huge social failing…

All classes go into nursing, from those of my very working class north east upbringing to the terribly posh double barrelled ones in some London hospitals and universities....pay hasn't kept pace with inflation though so what would once have given a very decent standard of living has all been eaten up by cost of living and a succession of mad governments with no clue.

A registered nurse is a professional who is bound by professional codes, the need to demonstrate continuous professional development, and revalidate regularly.

Would you regard a teacher as a middle class professional? Or a lawyer, or an accountant?

Class is nowhere near as clear cut as it once was unless you're royalty...

I have been qualified for 28 years this year, nurse practitioner and earn roughly 60k a year. I have a masters a diploma and a degree, I still consider myself working class as that was my family roots. I lead a comfortable lifestyle not rich not poor. Proud of my roots.

It is a working class occupation because of the low pay and gruelling labour even though when you think about what the job entails and the higher education needed to fulfil the position, it absolutely shouldn’t be deemed as a working class job.

I recognise it’s also quite a dangerous to categorise occupations in classist positions as though one is held in higher regard than the other.

Does it really matter what “class” it falls into?

You just know. There are innumerable signifiers.