| Description Of Item | These recorded conversations took place in 1996 as a preliminary to a study of the creation of the National Health Service in Scotland which resulted in the publication of McCrae's 'The National Health Service in Scotland: Origins and Ideals' (2003).
They are not structured interviews to cover specific questions, and were relaxed conversations, often over lunch. They discuss attitudes towards the NHS among those who had experience of its formation and early years - civil servants, general practitioners, hospitals doctors and nurses and medical academics.
The interviews also do not introduce the speakers and frequently recording begins part-way through a conversation, they also frequently end mid-sentence (this was the case in the original recordings). There is also often a lot of static on the recordings and in places the dialogue is quite indistinct.
In addition to the recordings, a paper list detailing the interviewees is held detailing a brief biography of each. One individual appears on the paper list of interviewees but there is no corresponding recording, that is Sir John Crofton, President of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh and Vice Principal of Edinburgh University. |