Eileen Skellern

Eileen Skellern (1923–1980) was an English psychiatric nurse who was involved in pioneering psychosocial and psychotherapeutic methods for treating patients. She helped open up new roles for nurses in mental health work, and demonstrated that they could be equal partners in a team, taking personal responsibility for patient care while collaborating with doctors and playing an important part in new developments in therapeutic treatment. While also taking a lead in education, administration and policy development, she did research and published in medical and nursing journals, and was a member of key committees in her field.

Flora Eileen Skellern was born on 14 June 1923 in Stone, Staffordshire to Flora (née Poole) and Willis Arthur Skellern, a commercial traveller. After attending Retford High School for Girls in Nottinghamshire she went to train as a nurse at Leeds General Infirmary, qualified in 1944, and worked there, first as a staff nurse, then in 1946 as a sister on a ward where there were some psychiatric patients.

Her introduction to nursing psychiatric patients in Leeds made her interested in modern psychological approaches to care of the mentally unwell. The Cassel Hospital by Ham Common, London had a reputation for treating patients in a therapeutic environment and she moved there in 1948 to follow their recently developed course in psychosocial treatment and nursing for nervous disorders. Skellern joined the Cassel Social Therapy Unit as a permanent staff member in 1949. There she worked with Tom Main on pioneering psychotherapeutic and psychosocial treatments. During her time at the Cassel she underwent psychoanalysis herself and observers said she found it easier to collaborate with analytically-inclined doctors and nurses.

In 1952-3 she wrote a report for the Royal College of Nursing, The Role of the Ward Sister. It was based on numerous visits to hospitals and was funded by a scholarship grant given for a study of the “practical application to ward administration of modern methods in the instruction and handling of staff and student nurses”. It was "the first serious piece of nursing research done in England by a psychiatric nurse".

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