Commentary on Brooks J (2009) ‘The geriatric hospital felt like a backwater’: aspects of older people’s nursing in Britain, 1955-1980. Journal of Clinical Nursing 18, 2764-2772

In the past, as in the present, older people constituted the largest single group of recipients of nursing care in both hospital and community settings. However, the practical realities associated with providing that nursing care and the changing organisational frameworks in which it was delivered have received only scant attention from historians of nursing, as acute care nursing of younger adults and children continues to dominate the literature. Brooks (2009) has, therefore, performed a valuable service in highlighting some aspects of the nursing care for older people in Britain in the period 1955–1980, and by calling for more research to be carried out. If her challenge is to be taken up, several issues, not all of them specific to the care for older people, will need to be addressed.