June Hewett, a retired nurse, reflects on her career in children’s nursing during the early years of the NHS and beyond.
As part of its marking of the NHS 75th anniversary, NHS England has collected stories from among former NHS staff to highlight some of the people who have made the health service what it is.
These include 10 former nurses and midwives. NHS England has kindly given permission to Nursing Times to republish their stories.
June Hewett, retired nurse
In 1947, I left school at the age of 16 years. Initially I wanted to be a nursery nurse but this would have meant leaving home to train so I opted to be a cadet nurse at St Martin’s Hospital in Bath. I started in September 1947 and worked on the children’s ward.
The children’s ward was a nightingale single story unit with about 10 cots, 10 beds and a small annex for isolating any infectious patient. We worked a 48-hour week, day duty was 8am-8pm and had one and a half days off a week.
Our duties were very varied. First thing in the morning we had to clean the ward floor. We pushed the beds and cots to the centre of the ward, put tea leaves down on the floor to reduce dust and then swept the floor.
We also had to stoke the solid fuel burners in the centre of the ward – there was no central heating in the wards in those days!
We then cared for the children which included taking the children to theatre for surgery, staying in theatre during the operation and then bringing the unconscious child back to the ward with the help of a porter to guide the trolley.
In December 1949 I went to the Royal United Hospital in Bath. This was a three-year training with a compulsory fourth year as a staff nurse. As my main interest was paediatrics, I did this on the paediatric unit.
I knew I wanted to do training in children’s nursing and that was a two-year post registration course, so I did that at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in London and then I came back to the Royal United Hospital in Bath as the first night staff nurse in the casualty unit.
I am very proud of the NHS because it has done a lot of good for a lot of people and there have been great advances that have been made over the years in all aspects of treatment.
When I think of other countries where people have to pay for their treatments it makes me realise how wonderful the NHS is.
- You can find more NHS staff stories, plus volunteer stories and retirement fellowship stories on the NHS England website