Inglis returned to Edinburgh in 1894, completed her medical degree and became a lecturer in gynaecology at the Medical College for Women and then set up a medical practice with Jessie MacLaren MacGregor, who had been a fellow student, and recognising women and children's medicine was under resourced, opened a maternity hospital, named "The Hospice", for poor women alongside a midwifery resource and training centre, initially in George Square. The Hospice was then provided with an accident and general service as well as maternity, with an operating theatre and eight beds, in new premises at 219 High Street, on the Royal Mile, close to Cockburn Street, and was the forerunner of the Elsie Inglis Memorial Maternity Hospital. In 1913, Inglis travelled across to the USA (Michigan) to visit and learn from a new type of maternity hospital.