Phyllis Myers 1915-2008: A personal inspiration

Everybody thinks his granny is special, but DUNCAN MITCHELL remembers how his grandmother's experiences became a powerful influence on his choice of career.

The realisation came as a shock, but I've got to the age when youngsters ask me what it was like when I was young - and there was me thinking that I was still a youngster myself!

I exaggerate a little, but only a little. Several people have asked me recently what it was like to work in the long stay hospital in which I trained and worked in the 1980s. My own past is now part of the history of nursing!

The good thing about this is that I now have a further link with the generation that inspired my interest nursing history. One member of that generation was my grandma who died last year at the ripe old age of 92. She helped kindle my interest in nursing and later on, my interest in the history of nursing.

Grandma lived all her life in Canterbury. She was immensely proud of her city and wherever she went she would manage to find some link, however fragile, with it. She worked at the Kent and Canterbury Hospital for a short period and then for much longer at St Augustine's Mental Hospital which was in a village just outside the city.

A true calling

She originally started nursing during the Second World War at the main Canterbury Hospital. I'm not sure whether this was part of a compulsory call-up (she was a young married mother and may have been eligible for local call-up) or whether she volunteered. Whatever the reason for working at the hospital, Grandma certainly took it. Given the choice she would have entered nurse training, but was prevented from doing so because of the cost and her status as a married woman.

At the end of the war Grandma stopped working and soon had a second child to look after. However, her earlier experience of nursing influenced her to apply to the local mental hospital for night duty.

Working all hours

Initially her work appeared to involve a largely custodial role in which at regular periods throughout the night she would do a round of the wards that she was responsible for. She had to carry a lamp together with a large clock. On entering each ward she would find a key chained to the wall and she would turn this in the clock to show that she had done her rounds.

The wards were locked and Grandma's main fear was that she might leave her key in the wrong side of the door and lock herself in. From what she told me this only happened once, after which she got such a rollicking from the night sister that she made sure that she never did it again.

After a while Grandma transferred to day duty. She was very much needed as, like all mental hospitals in the post war period, there was a significant shortage of staff at St Augustine's.

A chance to qualify

Qualified nurses were in particular short supply and one of the solutions to this was the introduction of the state enrolled assistant nurse, later to become the enrolled nurse. Grandma was one of the beneficiaries of this innovation as she was able to use her experience, together with some formal classes to gain her nursing qualification. Receiving the award was one of her proudest days.

Grandma remained in nursing until her retirement, her last job being in Canterbury's Mental Health Day Hospital. She described her experience of working in mental health services in three phases. The first she described as "the bad old days" in which many mentally ill people in the hospital had to be restrained mechanically for their own safety and that of others.

This was followed by "the brave new world" in which the increasing use of medication allowed people's symptoms to be controlled. Grandma felt that this allowed them some freedom within the hospital and relieved a lot of their pain and distress.

The third phase was characterised by disillusion as it became apparent that many of the drugs used had unexpected side effects that brought their use into question. This third phase coincided with the hospital scandals (one of which centred on St Augustine's) and the gradual rundown of the long stay institutions.

Strong opinions

Grandma never agreed with the hospital closure programme and couldn't understand my own enthusiasm for care in the community. She always liked a good argument and this was the subject of many debates between us.

I loved Grandma's stories about the past and when I became a nurse myself I enjoyed them even more as I was able to compare them to my experience of the dying days of the large institutions. When I started publishing the results of my research into nursing history Grandma was enormously proud and would happily read my chapters and articles - always making it clear that she didn't agree with everything that I wrote!

She was a huge influence on my thinking and although we didn't always agree, I had enormous respect for the way that she talked about her work and the patients that she nursed. I am still in awe of the long hours that she worked in very difficult conditions and the way she could make the most of things and fondly remember a difficult past.