General Chat

My first wage for a month was £12 7/6d..I lived at home..It was a small fortune to me...1964.

Jean
You have just reminded me of our queue for meals. As a cadet we were served last as anyone else took priority and the doctors certainly didn't mix with us. However at Christmas all change and the doctors had to serve nurses their Christmas dinner. Consultants who never acknowledged you all year were suddenly very friendly and then the next day they wouldn't speak again.


Wages - my first pay packet was £16 for a month as a Cadet and that was after board and lodging was taken out. I could manage on that far better than today.
Di

I remember the porridge ,cooked in a double boiler overnight,,,it was a bit hit and miss at times,lumpy or burnt...
We used to weigh out all the diabetic food as well.

We had a large red book in which reports on all patients were written every day, and again at night. Did not put in the horror stories the men who had been prisoners of war in Korea told us. That was not what they wanted people to know, but on Nights they are vulnerable and you hear alot of secrets. Was once in charge of the Locked ward, which was where soldiers who had been sent to army prison came when they were ill. Did the drug round complete with armed guard. Jean

It was the Millbank hospital, not Millbrook! getting confused with the local garden centre!
I loved the Nightingale wards, you could see all your patients and know which needed attention. On nights we prepared the morning porridge and cut bread and butter, taking the crusts off. They never went to waste as we were always starving! Not that there was anything wrong with the meals but we worked them off so quickly. Home sister used to make sure that an urn of cocoa and some biscuits were always left out for staff who had been out for the evening. Woe betide you if you missed any meals, you were told you had to keep your strength up. Jean

Bring back Kardexes and work books!!! lol
Wasn't life easier back then?
Can you remember sending new students for "fallopian tubes" and "long stands"?
And being left 6 months into your training on a nightingale ward in the middle of the night on your own?
I can remember we had to sit at the top of the ward with an anglepoise lamp - one night one of the patients complained about the light and we put a pillow case on it - can you imagine what happened 30 minutes later!!! sister didn't find out - thank goodness and we hid the evidence at the bottom of the sluice bin!!
Can you remember using the cardboard boxes that syringes came in for "burn bins" we used to put the needles into the syringe and push the plunger down on them to make them "safe" !!!
Carol

The good old Kardex. I hated it when the plastic bit at the bottom of each page used to fall off and there wasn't a new one available. Loose papers everywhere.

I still have my buff coloured training book with all competencies/skills signed off. I had it displayed in the hospital when the NHS 50th anniversary was on.
I aslo have my CMB Part 1 delivery book with all the details of the babies including twins I delivered. These would be parents themselves by now.
Never completed by part 2 as I got married and by this time I hated the bitchiness of the CLS team
Loved the hands on delivery and the babies.

Di

o,yes,the keys on the nappy pin..Making sure they rattled when you walked...
The Kardex report thingy,day and night staff had to fill it in and read out to the next shift.All DDA written in red.

Don't remember having to do report in a big book only the 'slept well' 'Comfortable night' etc

I do remember as a 1st year student working on an Orthpaedic ward and jostling with another student from my PTS to hold all the keys (not CD's). The fashion was to pin them with a nappy pin to your belt. Oh how important we felt when they jingled. We were left in charge of a full ward and even did the meddies. Frightening now thinking about it.

The CD keys were held by a Staff Nurse who acted as a runner between 2 wards.

Students these days don't do catherisations, can't deal with people face to face and best of all run away from a patient who is vomiting!! I think the good old days was better.

When we had the session on last offices in the classroom, our spinster tutor would cry. I think she had seen some awful cases in the war.

Di

Ann - I remember so well the beds down the middle of the ward, especially struggling to get the screens around the beds which was an art in itself

When quiet in theater---Sister had us packing dressing drums in case we had a train crash---we were on the main line in Darlington.
Polly
Aw the long nightingale wards----with sometimes bed up the middle if other wards were full

Who remembers being senior nurse on nights - just 2 nurses on duty at night, and having to write out the Report in a big book for day sister and nurses to read when they came on duty in the morning. No Deanne, not read Claire Rayner's book, but will look out for it.

Have any of you read CLAIRE RAYNER'S book about herself?

A good read, and I do not usually like celebrities ' life stories'.... but Claire was a nurse too, and her stories are so like yours.

Keep this up, I'm loving it.
Deanna XX

Night Duty on a very old style Nightingale ward,with a real fire at the end of it..The cockroaches came out at night and we would sit there with glass syringes filled with ether and knock them out,we couldn't kill them...!
They crawled back in their holes by the morning.
Hospital no longer exists.All moved to Broomfield Hospital .

any more memories?

I remember on my Sick Kids placement not doing obs on a wee boy cos he was sleeping --no unconscious --oops!!!
Another memory on post natal wards giving new Mums a bag with sanitary towels and a box of OPENED tissues for the bidet. They all walked to the toilet with these plastic bags,
Ros xx

In the 70's we had books-
Bath book, Dressing book, Bowel book, 2 hourly turns book, hourly fluids book, mouth care book. Very task orientated but at least if something wasn't done sister knew who to approach to shout at.
Dreaded getting the task of asking patients if they'd had their bowels open as you ended up doing it in the middle of visiting.
Also had the job of telling visitors only 2 to each patient and not to sit on the bed.

My last shift before I got married I was ambushed after the night sister had done her 2am round and sat in a wheelchair where both arms were plastered to the armrest and paraded all around the hospital with a cardboard bedpan insert had been decorated with paper flowers as my headgear. Hoped and prayed that the plaster didn't set before I needed to handover to the day staff. Luckily it didn't.

Di

Yes I'd forgotten that's what they were called!! i can also remeber on very snowy day seeing the trail of boys footprints into various windows in the nurses home!!
N what about the dreadful 1 pint soap and water enemas complete with funnel tue and bucket that was used for everyone!!

Pam
Could swear we were at the same hospital as I remember vividly some of the same experiences.Lol

Carol - Do you mean Zimmer drainage bottles with the red points which went out an an angle when the suction was fully on.

Joan - Once after a sweep of the nurses home a boyfriend of one of the students was found to have been living in for over a week without anyone noticing. Home Warden was not impressed.

Di

I remember when I qualified and still lived in quarters. Boyfriends not allowed in rooms.
Fire alarm went off one night and it was amazing to see the vast number of tussel-haired 'doctors' at the fire point; all with white coats, stethoscopes and carrying a BNF or Mimms.

We had to take the broken thermometer to sister in a kidney dish and get told off as they cost £1...:-(