Around the world and back again ...
Published: 20 February 2009
Angela Shash, former committee member and newsletter editor, reflects on a full career in the NHS and with the forum.
On 30 November 2008, I retired early from the NHS and from my post as a senior staff nurse in the Radiology Department at Northampton General Hospital, the very place where I had started my training to become a state registered nurse (as we were known then).
Student days
Because I lived at my parents' house, I received an extra allowance and thus got more in my pay packet than those in the nurses' home (and home cooking to boot). After three months in preliminary training, I went on a male surgical ward for my first placement (no mixed wards then). In those days we worked a 44-hour week, which usually included at least two split shifts - the hospitals relied heavily on the student nurses to staff the wards. The work was very much task orientated, with the first-year students doing 'back rounds' and the third-year students the drug rounds.
There was a lot of night duty, too - three months every year - where students would be in charge of 30 patients and had to have a very good reason to call the night sister. But I believe that patient dependency was much less than it is today. Many surgical patients remained in hospital for ten days until their sutures were removed and laparoscopic surgery was unheard of. There were no computerised tomography (CT) or ultrasound biopsies - indeed there was no CT or ultrasound. A 'laparotomy and proceed' was an operation many patients had to sign up for.
Making a start
After completing my training, I worked at a local hospital for the 'mentally handicapped', as the expression was then. Nowadays many of these patients are cared for in the community. I went on to work in the Midlands, first as a staff nurse and then as a sister on a female surgical ward. A colleague and I, being unhappy with task-orientated work, encouraged our students to care for the patient holistically, although we hadn't heard of that expression then.
In the late 1970s, nurses' pay - even then - was low. Encouraged by the higher rates of pay on offer in the Middle East I went to work in the King Abdulaziz Hospital in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, which was a very interesting experience, with a truly multilingual and multicultural staff.
While still in the Middle East - this time working at a private hospital in Cairo that had a marvellous view over the River Nile to the pyramids - my flatmate, a radiographer, went back to England in 1979 to do a course on a new type of diagnostic tool called ultrasound. By 1983, the hospital in Cairo even had a CT scanner.
Back in Blighty
Returning to England in the early 1980s, I worked briefly as a representative for a drug company, but, preferring the excitement of acute hospital work, I soon started as a radiology staff nurse at my old training hospital - Northampton General - which was expanding rapidly.
Over the years there have been so many advances. We used to do angiography using 7F catheters, which seem enormous alongside the 4F catheters in use nowadays. Angioplasty was a rare event. For those patients with no palpable femoral pulses, there was trans-lumbar aortography, performed under general anaesthesia, where a large and long needle was inserted into the aorta, with the patient lying prone. When it was removed there was no digital pressure to achieve haemostasis and the patient could lose quite a lot of blood.
Now, of course, we angioplasty and stent, we do fine needle diagnostic aspirations, we have nurse-led procedures, we look after day cases, help with endovascular aneurysm repairs (EVARS), undertake conscious sedation and so much more. Changes are happening all time.
Moving ever forward
In 1997, Northampton's radiology department started performing diagnostic cardiac angiography, which was a great step forward (and a huge learning curve). In June 2008 the Northampton Heart Centre opened, where coronary angioplasty and stenting will shortly take place.
During my time at Northampton, I became a member of the RCN Imaging Nurses Forum, also joining its steering committee for a number of years. While there, I found the support of like-minded colleagues and the RCN to be invaluable. Imaging is a small and very specialised area - a minority group. The College's creation of forums to promote and assist groups of nurses in clinical specialities certainly helped me to maintain and improve my nursing practice.
A big thanks
I should like to take this opportunity to thank all those I have met and worked with over the years sharing expertise and experiences. Well-known to my colleagues for my love of travel, now of course I hope see as many of those '1,000 places' before I die, and plan to explore the possibility of work as a television and film extra. Who knows, you may see me in the background of Casualty or Holby City!