Queen Sophia performed a great effort in her work to improve medical care, and founded the first nursing school in Sweden. She studied the work of Florence Nightingale, and visited Great Britain with Oscar in 1881, where they were received by Queen Victoria. During her visit, she studied the modern medical institutions in London. Upon her return, she launched a project to educate professional nurses in Sweden. This work was only just started by the pioneering work of Emmy Rappe in 1867, but there was as yet no proper educational institution for nurses, and the medical world was sceptical. In 1882 she managed to arrange classes for nurses at the Sabbatsberg hospital; 1884 she opened the Sophiahemmet University College for the students; and in 1889 it was developed to the Sophiahemmet, a combined hospital and school for nurses. The Sophiahemmet was seen as a role model for the education of nurses in Sweden, and it is also seen as the proper establishment of the nurse profession in Sweden. Sophia was very active in increasing respect for the nursing profession among doctors, who did not consider the work to be suitable for an educated female, and to make the profession respected, she wished for the profession to be seen as a religious calling and that it be undertaken by medically educated women, and she encouraged upper-class women to be nurses, all because she wanted nurses to be respected: the first head of her nursing school was the noble Alfhild Ehrenborg, who was a student of Florence Nightingale, and the Queen was actively involved in the institution until her death. In her nursing school, even students from the aristocracy were expected to scrub the floors. Two students of Sophiahemmet, Alma Brunskog and Olga Claréus was to have great significance for the medical care in Norway. Sophia chaired about fifty different charity organisations in Sweden and Norway. She received help seekers once a week, supported The Salvation Army and founded many organisations herself.