MY NHS MEMORIES

Today I am joining the rest of the UK in celebrating the 70th birthday of the National Health Service.  It was formed on this day in 1948 to give free or low-cost healthcare health care (doctor's surgeries hospitals, dental and eye services) to all legal residents of the U.K. It is funded out of our taxes.

Having worked as a nurse (staff, public health and Area Health Board 'Nursing Research') in the NHS I have a few memories.  Over the years I have had occasion to use the NHS both as an employee and as a patient.

In the late 1960s I got a job at Oakbank Hospital (below).  It was a former 'poorhouse' and was a real shock for me.  I had never been in a building over one hundred years old! It was Victorian sandstone and very black with coal smoke.  It was being temporarily used for the children's hospital as Yorkhill Children's Hospital had been found to be structurally unsound.

Two memories:  [1] rats running around the doorways in the courtyard and [2] the doctor telling me to put some cream on the baby's "wee bahhookie".  [bottom]!!

  Glaswegians queuing for X-ray screening for tuberculosis (TB) in George Square, on the final day of the campaign in 1957.

Scotland both historically and in our present day does not do well in terms of the health of its people.  When I first arrived I worked with people who remembered long queues of people at TB clinics, children vomiting in the streets (whooping cough).

Nowadays it is still Glasgow (with its poverty) that contributes to the sorry picture of Scotland's health. One only has to think of all the conditions that one associates with poor diet and housing (and unemployment) e.g. obesity, heart disease, dental caries to name but a few.

I am often irritated when the media give out the tables of how the NHS is coping because they do not give the context in which  the various services are working.  For example, a given hospital has a high death rate among a certain sector of the population. They don't say that the hospital is in an area of poverty and deprivation where, for example, drug addicts are sleeping out in all weather (except when they find a space in the hallway of the hospital in freezing temperatures).

Two memories of public health experience in the early 1970s [1] visiting a young mother who had a baby out of wedlock. She decided to keep the baby and not give it up for adoption.  That was the first time I came across that.

[2] Having to visit a family of 'travellers' (gypsies) who lived in a caravan [trailer] and did not send their children to school.

Around about the late 1980s I worked for the Greater Glasgow Health Board for a lady in charge of 'Nursing Research'.  My job was to monitor the students nurses labelled as 'trailers' (stuck in the system as they did not move to the next stage of their training) in the 5 Glasgow hospitals where they had Schools of Nursing.  It was an office job in the centre of the city.  I liked it but the lady responsible for the work died. The post was never filled (money saving); my job evaporated.

Two memories:  [1] I worked with a PET computer. Having learned to type at school I just loved this new technology which used floppy discs; I learned to carry a screw-driver as I had to constantly tighten the 'dongle' at the back.

[2] There were enormous problems with old buildings especially psychiatric institutions which were in a really bad state of repair.

In the early 1990s I worked for a microbiologist who was involved with cleanrooms.  I worked in the office using a computer and was involved with preparing manuscripts for books on Cleanroom Technology as well as educational material for courses on that subject.

I became very good at using a word processor, data base software and spreadsheets as well as early days of desk-top publishing with Pagemaker software.  If I recall correctly this was about the time I was first introduced to emails.  (Fax machines were still used a lot; great screeds of paper would be on the floor when I arrived in the morning.)

Memories: [1] Learning of the work in the 1960s of Dr John Charnley, Manchester. Charnley pioneered the fight against hospital-based infections. He designed a special surgical suit, the clean air operating theatre and a system for handling surgical instruments that significantly reduced the chances of patients contracting infections during orthopaedic operations.

 Charnley's green suit (above) with a hose out the back for ventilation

Charnley's green room (above), i.e. a tent covering the operating table.  Early days of laminar flow.

Apparently he was ignored by his peers because he was based out of London and had to put up with a lot of snobbery.  It is interesting to note that this particular 70h birthday week I notice his work is highlighted in topics on TV or newspapers.

Memories: 

[1]  Discs for the computer went from A drive floppy to A drive hard disc.  The printer jammed all the time and any male on the staff who was about when this happened scarpered out the door!  They did not want to know about computers nor printers and their problems!

[2]  I wrote an article about Killearn Hospital outside Glasgow.  It was a collection of wooden buildings which were used for neurological wards (Glasgow Royal Infirmary).  One story was of an operating room with windows that were open to the outside where they had to put a piece of gauze over it to keep the flies out.  It became derelict in the 1990s and when I visited it  it was used by sheep to keep out of the rain. (It is still there today.)

 And today ....

The new Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Glasgow  

This is where Mairi had Baby Ellie 3 years ago. It's a vast 'campus' with multi-story car parking. That flat bit on the top of the building is a helicopter pad. 

 Surgeon operating on a patient having a cataract removed.

That was me 3 weeks ago... all done on the NHS.