 Phyllis McCormack explained in a letter to the journal that she wrote the poem in 1966 for her hospital newsletter.This story was corroborated by an article from the "Daily Mail" on 12 March 1998, where Phyllis McCormack's son wrote that his mother composed it in the 1960s, when she submitted it anonymously with the title "Look Closer Nurse" to a small magazine intended just for Sunnyside.The next year, the poem was published in Chris Searle's poetry anthology "Elders" (Reality Press, 1973), without title or attribution.