Mary Lewis student nurse (1961)

so miss mary louis yes later we'll see you now thank you here we go fingers crossed come in mrs lewis good afternoon good afternoon nature do sit down you've come a long ways there yes and did you find the hospital quite easily yes thank you right from the start the interview was quite different from what i'd expected all my careful rehearsing was quite useless so i just relaxed which was obviously what matron wanted anyway she did ask about my o-level passes of course and looked at my certificates you left school two years ago what have you been doing since then i've been working in a library as an assistant and why did you leave school at 16 did you really want to or were you actually doing something else yes i thought i wanted to gain experience outside school until i could start my training as a nurse yes well that seems sensible enough do you like reading very much we talked about my other hobbies too and then matron asked me if i had any questions i asked her if we could get to church easily really selling attending church services and now miss lewis those who tell me why you want to be a nurse well i've always wanted to but i'm not really sure why i knew this question would come up and i still wasn't ready for it it seemed so silly to talk about ideals and things what have you thought about it in terms of service to people yes but there's no need to be embarrassed about it nursing is a service and the main reward isn't the trust people give to you for what you give to them i'm sure you know that yes matron i did good and i was truly glad she'd realized what i'd wanted to say anyway the worst of it was over and the interview hadn't been such an ordeal after all i had to go and see principal tutor and matron promised to let me know as soon as possible whether they'd have me i was lucky a week later i heard they had a vacancy in their next preliminary training school i was a bit alarmed leaving home for the first time and entering a new world thank goodness the warden met me when i arrived at the nurse's home a lot of the girls had their parents with them and i wished and wished that mother could have been there still they told me there was a telegram it was from the family wishing me luck that made me feel a lot better warden took us up to our separate rooms but we had to hurry tea at 4 30 in the common room with the tutors principal tutor was waiting to greet us they certainly make sure you don't stay lost for long sister promised to introduce me to some of the other students as soon as i got a cup of tea some of the parents had to leave because of trains and things sister introduced me to their daughter mary lewis meet and finley actually we'd already met on the day of the interview with matron it's usually difficult for me to get to know people quickly but anne and i hit it right off from the start she told me that she'd left school only last july and in fact had gone to her interview with matron still wearing her school uniform she said it felt jolly odd being called miss finley but rather nice anne's parents hadn't really wanted her to take up nursing but after an interview with matron and looking around the nurse's home they felt happy about it or at least resigned to letting anne try it for a while and said you'd come back when her parents had gone meanwhile i wanted to look at a rather formidable chart on the wall it actually showed the whole of our three years program here including holidays this was doreen morgan another new girl we agreed that the third year was too far off to get steamed up about doing looked awfully grown up and admitted that she was 23 i didn't know you could start training as old as that but apparently you can quite easily it must seem like going back to school after spending five years in an office but dorian was very excited about being here are you getting on all right yes thank you because you'd like to go upstairs now and start unpacking thank you very much we began our new working life by learning something quite unacademic how to fold and put on our nurses caps it certainly helps to remove any last traces of nerves and then we settled down to learning basic subjects anne had done quite a bit of science at school so she was already familiar with microscopes bacteria and culture plates but lots of the girls were like me and had to start from scratch we were introduced to someone we'd get to know terribly well good old charlie we learned how the body moves and we learned how to use our own bodies properly this was an exercise to teach us how to lift heavy people without strain back both arms swing lift back and forward this was one of the things we really enjoyed doing and so was the practical nursing routine we learnt in a mocked up ward for things like bed making and bandaging we used each other's patients but we couldn't practice giving injections to each other so we had another kind of patient with a particularly tough skin a patient that couldn't protest when we did it wrongly we learned all the routine things in nursing but although we'd been there for four weeks we still hadn't seen a real patient how can one feel tenderly towards a wretched stuffed dummy three days later we visited a ward for the first time i suppose i'll see thousands of patients before the three years are up but i shall always remember the first patient these were the people we had become nurses to help at first there was so little we could do for them but we learned every week we learned more and more we began to feel like nurses even look like nurses we were still new girls and the patients knew it but most of them were nice and in their own ways tried to make life easy for us there were exceptions of course but the least we could do was to listen to their complaints and worries we weren't angels by any means and occasionally we really got fed up seemed so dreary at times and yet at other times it seemed to be the glamorous job people think it is we were never left feeling either way for long my special interest was the baby ward and i loved doing what little i could do to help them children need a very special kind of patience and anne had it what a variety of patients we had you really can see a true cross-section of society in a hospital field the young the rich the poor the kind the malicious the burial and the not so well you could make up a tinkertailer jingle about it we worked and we played some played hard like anne doyne and i would give her a game but really prefer something less strenuous like this whatever it is we value our free time we love our work but these moments of leisure are very precious too the year was coming to an end my first christmas away from home i thought at first it would be unbearable but i soon realized that i wasn't the only one feeling like this there's something rather special about bringing the happiness of christmas to those who are separated from their families is christmas or no christmas the ordinary routine of the hospital must go on night and day i report it to the staff nurse quietly quietly dorian had finished her midnight supper and i went to have mine it's a very special feeling night duty the hospital is silent sleeping the corridors are deserted except for occasional night worker like oneself we greet each other like old friends one feels deeply responsible and even a little superior to everyone else and then suddenly the exams were on top of us will you stop writing now please and let me have your papers it was all over for the moment our second year was heralded by a change of color in our belts and the happy thought of no more state exams for two whole years we started to work on a more advanced syllabus we learned about the hospital's links with local health and welfare authorities and their services and discussed actual case histories yes sister mrs parsons is 32. and she's expecting her sixth baby first of all we suggest that the antenatal clinic should contact we suggested how we'd cope with the patient's welfare problems and then we were told by the ominou what in fact had been done in fact that is just about what did happen um mrs parsons did have to go into hospital and these brain teasers were fun and a change from demonstrations and lectures the second method of artificial ventilation involves the use of a bellows we have one of these in every ward close to the patient these bellows work on the principle that the air is drawn in for a valve at the top of the fellowes where the bellows are expanded distinguished consultants and doctors came to lecturers have a valve like this in the circuit otherwise you would blow the patient's lungs up just like a balloon and you would gradually expand the patient more and more the patience and the illnesses became more and more part of our lives we knew them inside out and then there were the operations whenever i enter the theater now i always remember the first time i watched an operation it was my first year and i really was scared of the thought of it but there'd be nothing to worry about and even then i'd been fascinated by the perfect teamwork of those around the table and the skill of the surgeon it's mr hopkins he's gasping for breath what is personal respiration i can't feel a pulse very well then nurse ring emergency and fetch the resuscitation trolley mr hopkins is one of our seriously ill patients no pulse pupils dilated now think clearly mary loose and fast looks like cardiac arrest first get respiration started get him breathing secondly get air into him most important don't let up now or his heart might stop again for good this time finally hand over thankfully to the doctor five minutes ago i suddenly realized how far i'd gone since i'd first arrived then everything seemed so much bigger than life the wards seemed enormous the sisters and doctors seem to have so much knowledge and confidence the patience seems so fragile three years later i can look back with a wonderful sense of achievement for i've changed more than my belt i've changed myself i feel i'm a responsible and valued member of the nursing profession now i realize how worthwhile all the effort has been the big dance of the year and we relax even though our final exams are only two weeks away earlier today principal tutor spoke to us about our futures and as i danced i thought over what she'd said there is such an enormous field from which you can choose once you are qualified of state registered nurses some of you i know are hoping to specialize in psychiatric nursing and in midwifery others will prefer nursing in the local authority services then there is nursing in the forces overseas in industry and elsewhere that many will want to stay on the staff of a general hospital even if you decide to give up nursing after marriage your training will not have been wasted and you'll always be welcomed back whichever branch of nursing you choose good luck in your examinations and my sincere good wishes for the future girls in search of a career i wonder how many of them will decide to become nurses i wish i could tell them that this isn't just another job but a whole new world with a fascination all its own you