The First Nursing Student Admitted in Härnösand/Sundsvall | 1849 |

Once admitted, the students went through a one-year nursing course, the second half of which they spent working as nursing assistants.

In the same way, the hospital in Sundsvall started admitting students from 1899. In the 1890s, the nursing education was provided only at four other county hospitals in the country. From 1912, the education in Västernorrland became more systematic; five students were employed each year for a two-year theoretical and practical course.

For 60 years, only female students were accepted to the nursing education. Not until 1952, the candidate Nils Agmo was admitted as a test student. Some of the older nurses had difficulties accepting men as nurses and Nils was only assigned male patients during his practice. He completed his education and in 1955, he was the first male student to graduate from the school. He later became the clinical department supervisor at Sidsjön hospital.

It wasn’t until the mid-1970s that the efforts to make the education more academic began to have an effect and in 1977, it became a “college nursing education of average length”. At that time, there were two units in Västernorrland: one in Sundsvall and one in Örnsköldsvik.