Kathleen Raven

Dame Kathleen Annie Raven, DBE, FRCN (b. 9 November 1910, Coniston, Cumbria, England - d. 19 April 1999, Oxford, England) was a British nurse, matron, government health official, health care engineer and university endowee.

Career

 * Matron, General Infirmary, Leeds 1949-57
 * Deputy Chief Nursing Officer, Ministry of Health 1957-58
 * Chief Nursing Officer, Department of Health and Social Security 1958-72

Background
Kathleen Raven was born and raised in Coniston in England's Lake District, attending Ulverston Grammar School. She was brought up in a Plymouth Brethren household where her parents read a chapter of the Bible every night.

Being the only girl among three brothers may have made her the tomboy who climbed mountains, skated, fished and rowed. She had a lifelong close relationship with her elder brother Ronald, who became a surgeon. Visiting her brother when he was a medical student at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London, she decided to become a nurse and started her training there in 1933.

She trained as a nurse at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London (where her brother Ronald also trained as a doctor), qualifying in 1936. She held posts as Ward Sister and Night Superintendent in that hospital, where she served throughout the Second World War. In 1946 she was appointed Assistant Matron there until, in 1949, she went on to become Deputy Matron at the General Infirmary in Leeds. She became Matron in the same year, and held the post for eight years.

She had tremendous support from her nursing and medical colleagues and thus was able to make many innovations in the training and conditions of service of the nursing staff. The General Infirmary at Leeds was the first teaching hospital to set up an Assistant Nurse Training Programme in 1955. In 1959 she married Professor John Thornton Ingram (d. 1972).

While at Leeds she was a member of both the General Nursing Council and the Council of the Royal College of Nursing, being Chairman of the Yorkshire Branch of the College. She was a member of the National Executive Committee of the Association of Hospital Matrons and served as a member of the Leeds Central Area Advisory Board for Secondary Education. For several years she was External Examiner for the Diploma in Nursing at the University of Leeds. In 1957 she became a member of the Central Health Services Council. Raven left Leeds to go to the Department of Health in London, where she became Chief Nursing Officer in July 1958.

For the next fourteen years she advised a succession of Ministers and Secretaries of State of differing political allegiances, always seeking the best for the National Health Service and the nursing profession, and acting as the moving spirit behind a number of initiatives to improve the role and status of nurses – notably, acceptance of the right of Matrons to attend meetings of Hospital Management Committees, and the setting up of the Salmon Committee on Nursing Administration and Management, and the Briggs Committee on Nurse Training.

An extensive visit to the United States in 1960 led to the introduction of intensive care units into the United Kingdom, only one result of many tours abroad.

After her retirement from the Department of Health in 1972, and the death of her husband very shortly afterwards, Kathleen Raven undertook a heavy burden of work as adviser to a major international health care corporation, travelling extensively in the Middle East and Far East, establishing health care facilities along British lines. She worked for the Civil Service Commission and was appointed a Governor of Epsom College and of Aylesbury Grammar School.

Endowments
She endowed the annual Kathleen A Raven Lecture at the Royal College of Nursing to provide a platform for distinguished speakers to promulgate their views on current nursing problems.

The Dame Kathleen Raven Chair in Clinical Nursing was endowed by Raven in 1998, the year before her death.

Honours
Her many honours include Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, Fellow of the Royal College of Nursing (of which she is Vice-President), Officer of the Order of St John, and an Honorary Degree from Keele University and the University of Leeds. She was made a Patron of the Royal College of Surgeons of England and was an Honorary Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Barbers.