Introduction: Social care nurses, the predecessors of today’s nurses, had an important role in the development of the health care system. They were mainly active in preventive nursing. The year 1919 is important for Slovenian nursing, because that is the year that the first social care nurse was employed. Until 1941, the profession experienced a rise in numbers. The second world war has grossly interfered with the lives of Slovenes and this profession. Social care nurses were also active during the war in the area of the Italian, or after september 1943, the German occupation authorities – the Province of Ljubljana. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to present the social care nurse profession in the mentioned area before and during the war. We wanted to present their schooling, professional organization, worksites and also their activities in Partisan civil health care. Methods: We used the descriptive and historical work method. We performed a review of older and newer literature and archive material. For better insight into the topic, we tried to find witnesses of that time. Results: We reviewed the archive material of larger archives and museums. The material about this topic is rare and scattered across different funds. However, we also found and used a lot of secondary material in the form of newspaper articles, which reported about the discussed topic. Discussion: The schooling of social care nurses during the war did not differ greatly from pre-war schooling. During the war, the school for social care nurses was educating them uninterrupted. The Yugoslav society for graduated nurses, the head organization of social care nurses of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, ceased to exist with the onset of the occupation. The same goes for its section in the Drava banovina, which included Slovenian social care nurses. All the prominent preventive health care institutions, which remained active in the area of the Province of Ljubljana, continued to employ social care nurses. These included: health care centres, infirmaries and institutions that cared for children’s and school health. The curative field of health care involved nuns. An exception was the military hospital in Ljubljana, which employed civil social care nurses. In addition to the Partisan military ambulances, they were also active in Partisan civil health care; in its infirmaries and hospitals. Conclusion: We think that social care nurses represented, already in those times, important staff in health care. Their activities during the war did not cease, they were very active, the only thing that stopped working was their professional organisation. Even though they were mostly uncredited and unnoticed for their labour, they performed hard and intensive work and helped care for people’s health even during those hard times.
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