Serving the nation: looking back on 70 years of nursing care

The nurses provide an insight into how the profession has changed during this period – not only in terms of, on a material level, the uniforms worn by nurses, but also the complexity of care provided.

What appears to have remained constant, however, is the view of the profession as one that is highly rewarding and gives people an opportunity to make a difference in an ever-widening and diverse variety of settings.

1952-62

Neilma Keefe, qualified 1962

If Neilma Keefe had been told at age 16, when she started nursing, that she would still be doing it more than 65 years later, it is likely she would not have believed it. But looking back over the years, she told Nursing Times: “It obviously shows I’ve enjoyed it.”

Ms Keefe’s career began in 1957 as a nursing cadet. A couple of years later, she started training at the former Prince of Wales Hospital in North London and qualified as a nurse in 1962. “I loved every minute of it,” she said.

Her training was “very strict”, with students made to stand if a sister walked in the room. Working 48 hours a week in clinical practice, she collected 15 shillings – around 70p – a week and lived in a student nursing home with a curfew of 10pm. Her uniform included a dark blue and white striped dress, an apron and a hat with a bow. More than six decades later, she now wears a light-blue tunic paired with trousers.

With a passion for wound care, Ms Keefe works at a specialist burns and plastics unit at Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust. “I never thought I’d say this, but I’m going to do my revalidation again in August,” she said. “As long as the mind is still alert, and obviously the body… I’m fine. I love my job, I love nursing.”

Mixing with younger people and teaching colleagues is her favourite part of currently being a nurse.

Ms Keefe worked throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, during which she said colleagues had been so “considerate and caring” to one another. “Out of the bad always comes good,” she said.

Nursing, she said, has “changed out of all proportion” during her career. She explained that patients did not stay in hospital as long, and she was concerned that some students were “lost” because of a move to what she described as “self-learning”.

Ms Keefe will soon be attending the graduation of her granddaughter, who, having been inspired by her grandmother, recently qualified as a children’s nurse.

1962-72

Dame Elizabeth Anionwu, qualified 1968

Elizabeth Anionwu knew from a young age that she wanted to be a nurse. When she was in care as a child, she remembers a nurse who would use distraction therapy to treat her eczema.

“She used to make me laugh by using words I thought a nun shouldn’t use and I would fall for it every time. I wanted to be a nurse like her, so that is what I vowed,” she said.

Dame Elizabeth joined the “nursing family” at Paddington General Hospital when she started training, and qualified in 1968. After a few different placements, she turned her focus to working with Black and minority ethnic communities in the UK.

The proudest moment of her career was when she helped establish the first nurse-led UK Sickle Cell and Thalassaemia Information Screening and Counselling Centre in 1979, making her the first sickle cell specialist nurse in the UK.

Dame Elizabeth practised as a sickle cell nurse for 10 years before pursuing academia; she became a lecturer at the Institute of Child Health at University College London in 1990, a position she held until 1997. Just two years later, she established, and was head of, the Mary Seacole Centre for Nursing Practice at the University of West London until she retired in 2007.

Reflecting on the diversity and breadth of her career, she believed there was an even greater variety of opportunities available to nurses now. “When I started out as a student nurse in the late 1960s, I would never have envisaged the opportunities, not only in career progression, but also in the type of nursing career you could have as a registered nurse.”

Dame Elizabeth has retained her interest in the experience of Black British nurses. She has noticed improvements in diversity in nursing but argued there was still some way to go.

“I’ve seen the confidence grow in nurses who, historically, weren’t seen as the important nurses in the profession. There are other groups of nurses who are more confident at speaking out. I think that’s very healthy,” she said.

1972-83

Merryl Lawrenson, qualified 1974

With no internet to search what nurse training might entail, Merryl Lawrenson looked to her mother, who was a nurse, and a friend in the local village, who had trained at St Bartholomew’s Hospital (Barts), and took a leap “into the unknown”. She began at Barts and qualified in 1974.

Being a student nurse came with great responsibility, she said, much as it still does today. If wards were short-staffed, Ms Lawrenson would be moved to a different, unfamiliar setting. She remembered being moved to intensive care, just as many staff were during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. In the 1970s as a 19-year-old student nurse, she recalled feeling “absolutely terrified”.

Ms Lawrenson, who went on to become a theatre sister and health visitor, and who helped set up a sexual health outreach service, welcomed reforms that saw nursing become a graduate profession. With the “technical challenges of today”, she said “well-educated” individuals with “good academic skills” were needed.

Nursing has changed “amazingly” over the years, she added. For example, she noted advancements in the way cervical cancer was treated. “When I was in theatres, we were putting radioactive implants into [the] cervix for cervical cancer, now they use a special drug that is injected – and made up on site,” she said.

Conversely, she felt that staff shortages and the increasing complexity of care meant staff did not have as much time to attend to the “basic” needs of patients, such as eating and drinking.

Reflecting on her old uniforms – a pink dress in theatres – she could appreciate how modern scrubs could be “more comfortable”. However, she likened her dress and tights ensemble to an “army uniform” of which she was proud. “Your shoes were polished, and you would have been told off if you had ladders in your tights,” she said.

1982-92

Amanda Young, qualified 1987

During the first 13 weeks of pretraining at the Princess Alexandra School of Nursing, Amanda Young wore a distinctive “purple passions” uniform, which identified that she was not yet a student nurse. In these weeks, she and others were sent to sit with older patients for an hour, to practise their communication skills.

Dr Young enjoyed all her training, and said she benefitted from the practical experience she was offered. She qualified from the then London Hospital in Whitechapel in 1987.

Her diverse career included a year working in Canada and becoming a district nurse in East London, which she “absolutely loved”. For her, “it was the best job ever”, she said. “It’s very different to hospital nursing: your patients are in charge.”

Dr Young then went into academia, at London South Bank University. After working with adult nursing students, she felt there were some misconceptions about older people and end-of-life care that she wanted to challenge.

When speaking with Nursing Times, she also reflected on how nurse training today differed from hers. “Students don’t get as much communication training,” she said. “I don’t know whether they have the time to. They don’t get as much hands-on time learning as they used to.”

Dr Young undertook her PhD in palliative care at Lancaster University and graduated in 2016 – the proudest moment of her career. She said the most enjoyable thing about being a nurse is being able to work in communities and find out about people’s lives.“Meeting older people and finding out what they did in their lifetime is really just fabulous. I love my job,” she added.

Dr Young now works for community nursing charity the Queen’s Nursing Institute (QNI) as a nursing programmes manager. She described the QNI as an “amazing organisation” that “makes a difference”.

1992-2002

Junierose Gazzingan, qualified 1995

Becoming a nurse was a “calling” for Junierose Gazzingan who trained in the Philippines in the early 1990s, before moving to the UK more than 20 years ago. “I had never imagined myself doing a different profession,” she told Nursing Times.

In her current post as matron for the care of older people in London, it was her mission to inspire and empower her team to be “the best version of themselves” as nurses. She said she was “proud” of her efforts in ensuring good patient care and staff experiences at Northwick Park Hospital, and believed she had the “compassion” and “qualities of a good nurse” in her.

Having undergone a four-year nursing programme at Centro Escolar University in Manila, her studies were based on “American education”, she said, which meant it was a “bit of a shock” moving to the UK in 2000 and seeing the differences in nursing and health services.

Nursing had also evolved during the time she had spent working in the UK, including in advancements in treatments and increased patient complexities, she noted.

Starting out as a staff nurse, Ms Gazzingan initially spent almost 20 years working at Ealing Hospital and then moved to Northwick Park Hospital in 2019 to take on a senior leadership role, before being appointed matron. “Normally, I don’t want to have a change of environment because you’re in your comfort zone,” she said. “But at that time, I was ready for the challenge.”

In thinking about the perceptions of nursing today, Ms Gazzingan acknowledged the “struggle” of recruiting and retaining staff. But she wanted to spread the message that nursing was a “great profession” and offered “such a rewarding experience”.

2002-12

Anna Masheter, qualified 2006

Anna Masheter knew a career in nursing is something she would enjoy. After initially studying fine art and sculpture, she embraced a career change and decided to enrol at Northumbria University on a nursing course.

After Ms Masheter qualified in 2006, she moved to Germany and worked alongside the Ministry of Defence as a nurse specialist adviser for soldiers’ health. She said she thoroughly enjoyed her time in postings, and especially the focus on public health and disease management.

Since 2012, Ms Masheter has taken on various roles in the Maria Mallaband Care Group. Now, as chief nurse, she said she wanted to change people’s perceptions of care home nursing. “People in the past have thought of care home nursing as where you end your career. But we do so much, people just don’t realise that. I think adult social care has progressed and people appreciate what we have to do a lot more, which is nice to see,” she said.

Ms Masheter noted how social care nursing had expanded to now include learning disability, young person’s and dementia units, for example, which she said was “fantastic”. As a chief nurse, she said the best thing about her job was being able to support nurses so that they could care most effectively. The expansion of care services is something she believed had helped nurses broaden their knowledge and skills. “By being allowed to do a lot more, we’re attracting people into the profession. They’re accountable and they’ve got a lot more scope on what they can do. Actually, they feel very comfortable with being that kind of nurse.”

No matter what role she has undertaken, Ms Masheter has always been proud of her blue uniform. “I call them ‘my blues’ and I still have them. If I go to services and I am supporting as chief nurse, I wear my blues. If not, I am in a blue suit!”

2012-22

Sam Jude, qualified 2013

When Sam Jude began his nurse training in India, more than a decade ago, it was Florence Nightingale in particular who inspired him to pursue a career in the UK. Rather aptly, after qualifying from the Himalayan College of Nursing as a registered nurse in 2013, Mr Jude moved to West Norfolk on International Nurses Day in May 2016 – Nightingale’s birthday. Nightingale’s passion, determination and bravery had always been “very close to my heart”, he told Nursing Times.

His four years of training covered nursing, including mental health nursing and children’s nursing, and midwifery. He described himself as “one of the lucky ones” because he boarded at his nursing school – something, he felt, helped with “peer support learning”.

Moving to the UK had not been without its challenges, he said, including adapting to the culture and language. “We have our struggles of being somebody of a different race, a different ethnicity,” he added. “But in the profession and being a nurse has been really great.”

He began as a staff nurse at The Queen Elizabeth Hospital King’s Lynn NHS Foundation Trust, before progressing to clinical nurse educator and, more recently, a senior charge nurse on an acute care step-down unit. During the pandemic, Mr Jude was pivotal in setting up support groups for nurses who came from overseas. He later became an East of England executive lead for the British Indian Nurses Association – a UK-wide support network launched in 2020.

Moving to the UK and climbing up the career ladder were among Mr Jude’s personal highlights. Since he began nursing, he felt there was now an “increased focus on research and evidenced-based practice, with the ongoing advancement of technology and digital health”.

“The traditional role of a nurse has progressed beyond performing bedside care, to being part of the core multidisciplinary team; members bring their own individual strengths into clinical decision making and, in turn, help improve patient outcomes,” he said.