I’m from a family of nurses.
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 in Scotland.
Three of dads’ sisters were nurses and my own mum a district nurse. Watching her leave home of a morning in navy uniform dress, hat and coat, big blue 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 big black rubber doors, the shiny linoleum floors and I could see myself in that white apron, belt and fob watch! Haha
I left school and started hospital training at the Victoria Infirmary in Glasgow, living in at the nurses home, a purpose built two storey building, long corridors, rooms adjoining, each with single bed, desk, sink and tiny wardrobe.
Coming in through the big front door you were hit with a wall of heat from the always – on clanging radiators. Each floor had a kitchen, a living room with tiny TV and a large shared bathroom with rows of toilet and bath cubicles (no showers)
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? Much hilarity, many laughs and drama’s!
No boyfriends allowed but we snuck them in all the time. Lots of blokes sneaking down stairs of a morning or jumping out windows if they’d slept in 😉
Our only means of communication was a wall mounted phone with dial in front and long curling cord, someone usually sitting on the floor underneath, phone in the crook of their neck, a queue waiting patiently behind them.
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! Little did we know!
No internet, no Google, no streaming anything, no Amazon, no online shopping, no Kindle, our entertainment TV, books, magazines and music.
No idea how we slept with the competing songs blasting out (no headphones!) from vinyl record players and big silver boom – boxes but 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 distinctly playing Joni Mitchell’s “Blue” on my first night, slotting the clunky tape into its slot, pressing click on my personal boom box. So many other 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 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 sickly sweet white wine were the order of the day.
Daft young lassies but brave too, many noisy, smoky, drunken nights were spent debriefing, letting off steam, talking about confronting situations we dealt with on shift. And smoking was a thing, both in and out of the hospital! The canteen was one big room with a designated smokers corner so basically everyone smoked and stank of it! 😩
Dancing 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 me 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 an old tenement flat a five minute walk from the hospital. These buildings COULD be renovated beautifully like the Queenslanders here in Oz but ours was shithouse!
I swear the previous tenant died and I inherited their 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 🙋♀️) our Boomer/ Gen-X selves were expected to be independent and solve our own problems, no parents on speed dial.
An Inspector Clouse look-alike landlord collected rent in person, someone would hide the illicit pet cat hoping he wouldn’t meow. Tommy, who’s tail once caught fire on the gas ring, who regularly escaped onto the third floor window ledge, always a 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 back home from late shift in the dark, sometimes without a buddy, running past the local Queens Park, the ever present risk of being flashed at by creepy blokes (it happened) or worse, grabbed, raped or murdered.
Sleeping in for morning shift meant occasionally grabbing a taxi from the rank outside, the drivers cursing at such a small fare, the nice ones saying “hurry up hen, in ye get” probably had daughters of their own.
Arrived at work in our own clothes, changed 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 our practise 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 but cumbersome splints, crepe bandages and tape keeping 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 one night shift the sight of a wee determined delirious granny, her head popping up over the partition she’d just scaled 😆
The lifting we did without wardsmen, hoists, slide sheets or pat slides was crazy! Trained in “safe” techniques to move patients and if an injured occurred it 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 big metal transport trolley, us 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 no one on the ward with an epidural!
We’re 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 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 , no where to go wrong)
The only way they fall down is the sheer volume now of paperwork, time spent documenting sometimes 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 , can still smell the stink of tripe cooked in milk , which had 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, emigrated to Oz in 1995, working solely as midwife till 2015.
In tertiary hospitals midwives use nursing skills every day. Some women need intensive care post birth, there’s complex care for difficult pregnancies, acutely unwell pregnant woman come into these facilities and with the caesarean rate being at an unprecedented high, post-op surgical care is familiar.
A few years back the Gynae ward in my hospital was super busy and i was sent to help, the beginning of my return to working as a nurse again. A smooth transition and I haven’t looked back.
There’s never a dull moment in this job, can’t imagine doing anything else.
Next, learning to be a midwife in 1980’s Scotland.
Lindsey Crossan Registered Nurse/Midwife