Yesterday I attended a meeting at the place where it could be said that my nursing career began. In the summer of 1980, having been offered a place to start my nurse training and completed my A levels, I spent 2 weeks getting some work experience on a ward at what was at the time my local hospital. Never having actually been ill and with my experience of hospitals at a minimum it was quite an experience for an 18 year old who had wanted to be a nurse for ever but who in truth probably knew little of what was involved. The hospital was based on the site of an old victorian workhouse which had later become a sanatorium for people with TB and much of the old site remained as it does today. New buildings had begun to be built, but it still had the feel of a place with lots of history, not all of it pleasant.

My 2 weeks were spent on a surgical ward, into which I was welcomed and spent most of my time with junior nurses or auxillaries (what are now healthcare assistants) who had probably been there for years. My recollections of that period of time are at best sketchy as you might expect (25 years have passed after all) but it certainly didn’t put me off starting my training and becoming a nurse. It was valuable experience during which I was able to learn some of the most basic things like how to be brave enough to speak to someone who is sick, how to feed someone who cannot do it themselves and how it feels to work in a close knit team environment.

Yesterday’s meeting was held in a room in one of the old buildings and which contained probably 50 years of history on its walls. Old plans of the area, denoting where on the site you could find the TB block, the ‘chronic’ block as it was called (heaven knows who went there) and the nurses home. There was also a small farm with piggery and cow sheds. Other pictures showed the area the hospital covered and maps of the local areas including the street in which I was born. Sometimes it pays to be early for a meeting!

Healthcare has moved on considerably in the last 25 years, and perhaps nursing hasn’t turned out to be everything I might have expected (not an entirely bad thing probably) but those memories, all be it slightly dimmed,  of that 2 week period will stay with me.