Nurse education qualification courses have graduate status. Traditionally, from the times prior to Florence Nightingale, nursing was seen as an apprenticeship, often undertaken in religious institutes such as convents by young women, although there has always been a proportion of male nurses, especially in mental health services. In 1860 Nightingale set up the first nurse training school at St Thomas' Hospital, London. Nightingale's curriculum was largely base around nursing practice, with instruction focused upon the need for hygiene and task competence. Her methods are reflected in her "Notes on Nursing", (1898). Some other nurses at that time, notably Ethel Gordon Fenwick, were
Florence Nightingale premiering in London in 1929 with Edith Evans in the title role. It did not portray her as an entirely sympathetic character and draws much characterisation from Lytton Strachey's biography of her in "Eminent Victorians". It was adapted as a film of the same name in 1951. In 2009, a stage musical play representation of Nightingale entitled "The Voyage of the Lass" was produced by the Association of Nursing Service Administrators of the Philippines. In 1912, a biographical silent film titled "The Victoria Cross", starring Julia Swayne Gordon as Nightingale, was released, followed in 1915 by another silent film, "Florence