I’m from a family of nurses going way back.
Great auntie Evelyn nursed in London during WW2.
Great Auntie Jean was a “Call The Midwife” helping women birth at home, day and night in 1950’s Greenock, Scotland.
Three of dads’ sisters were nurses and my own mum a community district nurse. Watching her leave home of a morning in standard navy dress, hat and coat, huge nylon bag over her shoulder full of mysterious dressings and paraphernalia, I knew I wanted to keep up the family tradition.
Visiting hospitals as a girl I loved the antiseptic smells, the black rubber doors, the long corridor’s, the shiny linoleum floors and could easily see myself in white apron, belt and fob watch!
I went from school to hospital training at the Victoria Infirmary Glasgow, living in at the nurses home. I clearly remember my first night there, I loved it.
We were a bunch of teenagers let loose, released from the confines of home for the first time, what could possibly go wrong?
No boyfriends allowed but we snuck them in and out. Blokes jumping out windows or sneaking down stairs of a morning was a normal sight.
The only means of communication was a wall-mounted dial -in-front phone with long curly cord, someone usually sitting on the floor underneath, phone in the crook of their neck, queue waiting behind.
Waiting patiently back in 1983 was the norm, a world before the internet and smart phones, no personal wee computer in our hands (unthinkable!)
No expectation of instant communication and the thought of being able to SEE someone on a phone while talking was unimaginable! Like Star Trek!
Little did we know.
No internet, no Google, no streaming anything, no Amazon, no online shopping, no Kindle, our entertainment was TV, books, magazines and music.
Competing songs blared out from our cell-like rooms from record players or silver boom – boxes, don’t remember it being a problem?
Radio One was THE radio station (no lengthy inane ramblings, no ads!) best music, best Dj’s, Steve Wright, Noel Edmonds, Dave Lee Travis, John Peel and Annie Nightingale.
I recall playing Joni Mitchell’s “Blue” on my first night, pushing the cassette tape into its slot, pressing click on my boom box. So many lines from songs permanently embedded in my brain from that time
Duran Duran …. 🎶don’t say a prayer for me now , save it till the morning after 🎶
Pink Floyd … 🎶🎶wish you were heeeeere🎶🎶
Simple Minds …. 🎶 do do do do do do do get in get out of the rain 🎶
This Mortal Coil … 🎶 heeeere I aaaam , heeeere I aaaam 🎶
The Communards …. 🎶 don’t leave me this waaaaay🎶
The Smiths 🎶 heaven knows they made me miserable but I loved them 😆
U2 … 🎶 all I want is yooooo 🎶
Ultravox … 🎶 it means nothing to meeeeee , aaah Vienna 🎶
Our other main form of entertainment was the pub and drinking and I don’t mean lemonade. Half pints of cider or sweet white wine (Blue Nun) were the order of the day.
Daft young lassies we were but brave too, many noisy, smoky, drunken nights were spent letting off steam, debriefing the confronting situations we dealt with on shift. And smoking was normal, both in and out of the hospital, the canteen one big room with a designated smokers corner so basically everyone smoked and stank of it!
We danced to “rock the casbah” on repeat at “discos” adorned in frilly shirts, rara – skirts and stilettos, faces painted with orange foundation, blue eyeliner and blusher stripes.
I balanced work and pub life with aerobics, jumping around in Jane Fonda g-string leotard and head band. Vividly recall floor to ceiling mirrors on every wall, learning the grapevine move across the floor, the whole class turning round, back row becoming front and as a newbie finding myself front row centre, mortified, tripping over ma feet! I soon learned the steps and eventually became a front row queen! Haha.
The nurses home had to be vacated after the first year so I moved with friends to a tenement flat ten minutes walk from the hospital. These buildings could be renovated beautifully like Queenslanders here in Oz but ours, well it was shithouse!
I swear the previous tenant died and I inherited the room and mattress. Even woke up one morning to find my carpet covered in tiny beetles!
All very character building stuff, wouldn’t have dreamt of asking my parents for help, or asking for money (first born 🙋♀️) we Boomer/ Gen-Xer’s expected to be independent, solve our own problems, no parents on speed dial.
The Inspector Clouse look-alike landlord collected rent in person while someone hid the illicit cat hoping he wouldn’t meow, Tommy whose tail once caught fire on the gas ring, who regularly escaped onto the third floor window ledge, hell of a job getting him back in, he’d sit there flicking his tail giving you the fk – you – I’m – not – coming- in cat stare.
We’d walk home from late shift in the dark, sometimes without a buddy, running past the local Queens Park, the ever present risk of a flasher behind the park railings (happened) or worse, the fear of being grabbed, raped, murdered. Those did too.
Sleeping in for morning shift meant grabbing a taxi from the rank outside, drivers cursing the small fare, the nice ones saying “hurry up hen, in ye get” probably with daughters of their own.
Arriving at work in our own clothes, changing into uniform when we got there, the days of frilled starch hats, different colours denoting rank and seniority and black woolen red lined capes keeping out the harsh Scottish elements
Nursing itself has come so far in so many ways. Here’s a list of things I can remember from the late 80’s compared to now.
Mercury thermometers placed under tongues , radial pulse palpated, manual BP’s always. No acute deterioration or early warning tools
No IV pumps, drip rates counted, no wonderful adhesive dressings, cumbersome splints, crepe bandages and tape kept cannulas in place.
Constant vigorous hand washing with fierce disinfectant soap , hands always sore. No alcohol hand rub , gloves rarely used unless for aseptic technique dressings
Pressure area care done religiously, all those years of vigorously rubbing delicate skin, research eventually showing was causing more damage!
Wheeling a wooden drug trolley round the ward dispensing medication to every single patient then chaining and padlocking it back to the wall, pinning a large bunch of jangly keys back on yer uniform.
Nightingale wards with rows of beds up either side, flimsy partion walls dividing them into bays of four . I’ll never forget the sight one night shift of a wee determined delirious granny, head popping up over the partition she’d just scaled 😆
The lifting we did without wardsmen, hoists, slide sheets or pat slides. Crazy! Trained in “safe” techniques to move patients and if injury occurred was assumed you hadn’t used the correct technique. Aaargh!
The staggeringly dangerous straight lift!! Four of us moving patients from bed to trolley , placed along the body from head to toe, arms slipped under and across the patient, backs hunched over (no electric beds!) then lift and rotate in unison. Wonder how many dropped patients and permanently destroyed nurse backs it took to stop this?
Being taught as a student how to wash and respectfully prepare deceased patients ready for transport to the mortuary. Porters arriving with a metal transport trolley, pulling curtains round all the other beds then the quiet procession out of the ward.
Poor pain control compared to today, no ongoing assessment of pain scores, no Acute Pain Management Service, intramuscular injections given when patients were already in agony, no nurse IV administration(????) no subcut syringe driver pumps delivering constant micro doses of drug, no such thing as a patient controlled analgesia pump and absolutely no one on the ward with an epidural!
We’re now much better at helping people die peacefully too. Drugs for sedation, drugs for pain relief , drugs to reduce secretions , palliative care teams in hospitals , palliative care nurses , the dying patient pathway explicitly directing our care
Brutal procedures done on the ward back then, chest drains inserted and lumbar punctures done. Large laparotomy wounds the order of the day with black silk sutures needing removal , no neat dissolving subcuticular stitches.
Learning the skill of putting in nasogastric tubes (quick, quick, swallow , swallow) learning to give enemas with large funnels and rubber tubing and buckets!
Lots of bed baths , done in a certain way, in a certain order with a certain amount of towels, patient dignity maintained at all times. No microwaveable wipes!
Protracted stays in bed , no compression stockings , no daily blood thinner injections
Paperwork and admin SO much less. Now of course we have a raft of pathways, early warning tools and risk assessments all designed to keep patients safe, ensure we give optimal care (expectations listed, options to choose from, colour coding , tick and sign , nowhere to go wrong)
But … the sheer volume now of paperwork, time spent documenting often impacts on time spent with the patient and do pathways impede critical thinking??
No individual food trays , meals served from a big metal food trolley rolled into the kitchen , i can still smell the stink of tripe cooked in milk, which occasionally slopped into the custard 😩
Remember the ward maid, Mary, from my first job, so lovely, a tiny wee woman with the strongest Glaswegian accent who ruled her ward with a rod of iron, kept the place spotless. I would hide in the kitchen with her when I was stressed (often!)
I was a staff nurse for nearly two years before heading off to the world of Midwifery and by then had partnered with my handsome Tom Good who disconcertingly kept talking of his desire to live in Australia.
Lindsey Crossan Registered Nurse/Midwife