Night duty.

It was a bit damp this morning and I was a bit achy after yesterday’s gardening efforts, so I did some sewing. Didn’t get enough done to warrant  blipping it, so you get one of my old pictures. 

This was taken in the autumn of 1963 when I did a 3 month stint of nights on the children’s medical ward. It would have been taken about 7am after the older children had been given a ‘lick and promise’ before dressing in ‘yesterday’s’ clothes. Bath time and clean clothes were done mid morning by a nursing auxiliary (care assistant in today’s terms). The children were ready for breakfast at 7.30.

We worked 7 nights on, 4 off, then 7 on, 3 off, so a 3 week cycle. Long nights. We slept in the night nurses home on Bath Road, as the nurses home on the hospital site was too noisy to sleep. I went home for my night’s off. 

We would be awoken about 6pm with a cup of tea, then about 7pm the bus would take us down to the hospital, for breakfast. The menu was whatever was being served as super (or dinner these days), not always appreciated as our first meal of the day. The working day started at 8.30pm and we worked through until 7.30 when we had breakfast before going back to the ward at 8am to give the report to Sister. We did have 45 minutes break about 1 am for dinner. We would go one at a time and it was scary when you were left on your own!!!! The bus took us back to the home whenever we had all finished Sisters report.

There were only two nurses on duty on the ward at night. I was a first year (on the right) and my colleague was in her third year. You cannot see in the picture, but I have a white belt, a 2nd year would have a grey belt and a 3rd year black. We had nights off in rotation, so the ‘grey belt’ was nights off. It was tough work as we could have as many as 28 children if all of our cots and beds were full. If there were problems you could call for Night Sister and she would come to the ward.

Many of the children were in hospital for long periods and had repeated admissions. They were incredibly well behaved, most of the time and we got to know them well. They didn’t have their own clothes or toys, but we had an enormous walk-in clothes cupboard. We could kit anyone out and the regular kids knew exactly what they wanted to wear and chose their clean outfit each day.