Staff and patients do battle as Matron (Hattie Jacques), Sister (Joan Hickson), Staff Nurse Denton (Shirley Eaton) and Student Nurse Dawson (Joan Sims) attempt to keep a ward full of unruly patients including Kenneth Williams, Kenneth Connor, Charles Hawtrey, Bill Owen, Leslie Phillips and Wilfred Hyde-White. The hospital staff have their work cut out and only just manage to prevent Kenneth Williams from operating on Leslie Phillips' bunion!

The second film in the Carry On series has a number of firsts. It is the first film set in a hospital and the series would turn out no fewer than four hospital films in all. It also sees the debut performances of Joan Sims, Leslie Phillips and June Whitfield. Viewed nowadays, Carry On Nurse is as much social history as it is comedy film, for its fascinating insight into 1950s national health hospital life.