[8] She passed the Cambridge senior school certificate in 1933 and then studied to be a teacher at the United Missionary College in Ibadan, after her father discouraged her from her wish to be a nurse.

[9] On 3 January 1941, she married Eugene Samuel Oluremi (Olu) Pratt, a pharmacist for the civil service.

[5] In August 1946, Pratt moved to England to study nursing at the Nightingale School at St Thomas' Hospital, in London.

[4] Her son was left with foster parents while she attended the St Thomas’s Preliminary Training School.

[5] During her time at the hospital, Pratt experienced racial discrimination, when a patient refused to be treated by a black nurse.

Recent research shows that black nurses worked in the United Kingdom prior to the founding of the NHS in 1948, such as Annie Brewster and Omo-Oba Adenrele Ademola.

By 1948 trained black nurses predating Pratt's qualification in 1949, were working for the NHS;[13] however their stories are under-researched[14] and have only recently come to light such as Lulu Coote.

When she arrived, she discovered that her accommodation was in a separate block than her British expatriate colleagues and that the professor of medicine would not let her work on the ward when he learned that she was Nigerian.

[16] The new hospital was still under construction and Pratt imposed new standards for hygiene, care and nutrition and reformed the administration of the ward.

In 1959, she travelled to the United States, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica on a Carnegie Grant to gain broader nursing experience.

The award was presented to her by the President of the Nigerian Red Cross Society, Sir Adetokunbo Ademola, on 21 December 1973.