>historically, a large number of women who nowadays would train to become doctors were effectively barred by either explicit or implicit sex discrimination so went into nursing instead.
Exactly: if you're smart enough to be an RN, and willing to get that much education, why not go farther with your education and become a doctor, so you can get paid many times what you'd get as a nurse?
There are a group of people who have good enough academics to get onto a nursing course but not to get onto a medicine course.
It's just a smaller group now than it once was because the requirements for nursing have gone up and the discrimination which prevented women from becoming doctors has all but disappeared. Layer onto that the impact of broader opportunities for women outside healthcare (meaning fewer who are able to are willing to go into nursing) and there's a double impact.
That's a good anecdote. However, it doesn't bode well for the profession if the big draw is for people who are in a situation where they're smart enough for the academics but need to support a family fairly quickly. My mother was a nurse too, and did largely the same thing (she went to nursing school as a working adult). She got out of hospital work as fast as she could though.
Exactly: if you're smart enough to be an RN, and willing to get that much education, why not go farther with your education and become a doctor, so you can get paid many times what you'd get as a nurse?