Hospital School of Nursing

While walking through Charlottetown, we came across this monument marking a place where generations of Prince Edward Island nurses began their careers. It commemorates the Charlottetown Hospital School of Nursing, which operated from 1891 until 1969.

The nursing school began in 1891 in connection with the Charlottetown Hospital. At a time when professional nursing education was still developing in Canada, the school provided women with formal instruction and practical hospital training. The plaque notes that graduates became known for their high standards and professionalism.

For its first decades, however, the school did not have a permanent building of its own. That changed in 1920, when the first permanent School of Nursing building was erected on this site. The school became an important institution on Prince Edward Island. According to the memorial, it educated approximately 1,000 nurses during its years of operation. Those women went on to serve not only in Island hospitals and communities but elsewhere as well.

There is also an important connection to the evolution of health care. Early nursing schools were often closely tied to individual hospitals. Student nurses learned in classrooms but received much of their education directly on the hospital wards, where they also provided a significant portion of patient care. Nursing education gradually became more standardized and eventually shifted away from the traditional hospital-based training-school model.

The Charlottetown Hospital School of Nursing closed in 1969. Nursing education on Prince Edward Island continued through other institutions as the profession and its educational requirements changed.

The memorial was erected by the Charlottetown Hospital School of Nursing Alumni with assistance from generous donors. Unlike many of the Charlottetown monuments we have encountered, this one does not commemorate politicians, soldiers or nationally important events. It remembers education, a profession, and approximately a thousand women whose work was largely carried out in hospital rooms and at patients’ bedsides.