‘Nursing is in your blood’
Health Minister Robin Swann has announced a rolling programme of Covid-19 testing in Northern Ireland’s care homes. With more than 15,000 care home residents across Northern Ireland, it is certainly a significant undertaking — yet Molly Kane has been more than capable for the challenge.
While she started out as nurse on the wards in the Royal Victoria Hospital at the height of the Troubles, mother-of-two Molly (61), who lives in Larne with husband Uel (65), ended her career in a senior management role.
So, she has been the perfect choice to help oversee the testing of care home residents and staff in the Northern Trust during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“I think I was probably better suited to this kind of role than a hands-on clinical role because it has been a while,” she says.
“I’ve been co-ordinating the community swabbing team, which is very complex and it’s so important that everyone has all the information to get the job done and that we get the timing right.
“If we don’t get it right, it can mean a person misses out on a place in a home as they have to be tested 48 hours before they are admitted.”
Unlike many nurses, who know from a young age that they want to go into the profession, Molly resisted suggestions that it would be the perfect job for her. The principal at her school, Larne Grammar, insisted she should go into nursing — but Marie couldn’t have disagreed more.
“If someone was sick, she would have sent me to check on them — she must have seen something in me, but I would have said to people there was no way,” says Marie.
“Then completely out of the blue one Christmas, I was on Larne main street looking up at the Christmas tree and I just thought I was going to be a nurse.”
However, even then, her mind wasn’t entirely made up.
“I applied for the Royal because everyone said it was the best place in the world and then I got a job as a lab technician,” she continues.
“The Royal got in touch and asked me where I was, they told me they had a place for me and I started there on April 21, 1977.
“I had to live in Musson House and the matron would check your room and tell you it was unacceptable. I met so many people I would never normally have come into contact with, I loved everyone’s stories.”
But moving away from home for the first time was far from the most alien experience for Molly, who was exposed to the aftermath of some of the worst of Northern Ireland’s bloody history.
“It was very different from today,” she says. “I started out on ward 42 in the Royal — it was a fracture ward and the Troubles were really in your face.
“There were people there who had shot other people, there were policemen with guards around them, there were people
who had come off motorbikes. People were in there for 12 weeks and everyone got to know everyone, they would be sharing food and crisps and then when the relatives came in the guard went up and no-one looked at anyone.
“I will never forget this man asking me how many times he had been shot, which I thought was a reasonable question.
“I went to the ward sister and she turned on me and told me not to be so ridiculous — I went straight to the sluice in tears.
“It was very hierarchical, very organised, everyone knew their place, there were very high standards, but it was tough.
“You would walk on the ward and the sister would shout at you about something and you would spend the rest of the day devastated. But I loved the ward, it was fabulous — the sister was tough but fair, although she ruled with an iron fist.”
One of the patients that most sticks out in Molly’s mind from her days at the Royal Victoria
Hospital was a young soldier who was shot in the head by an IRA sniper.
She remembers his horrific injuries and how his parents brought in a balloon for him as it was his 21st birthday.
But of all the memories that stick out most is the moment when she thought he would die under her care.
“I was looking after him and he started going pink and then red and then blue,” she explains.
“I was trying to work out what was wrong, I was checking every tube and I was calling for help and no-one was coming.
“I saw a tube that was filled with water, so I pulled it out, emptied it and suctioned it and he started going back through all the colours.
“No-one knows what I went through in that room, it was very emotional. I’ve always wondered what happened to him.”
It was while she was working at the Royal that Molly became interested in mental health and she took up a job at Holywell Hospital in Antrim.
“It was a total culture shock, the patients would shout at you and tell you to stop touching them and I was used to patients saying thank you to me,” she says.
“The patient records talked about the lunacy act, what happened to some of these people was incredible. The vast majority of them had been there between 20 and 40 years.”
While Molly loved her time there, she was subsequently offered a sister post in the community, based in Ballymoney Health Centre and from there she moved to Whiteabbey Hospital.
“There were some fantastic characters,” she says.
“I had one patient who was paranoid he was going to be shot if he went out of the house. I worked with him and we got him out, I arranged for the bus to stop and pick him up.
“Then later I was driving down to Whiteabbey Hospital and it came on the news that a man with a learning disability had been shot and I just knew that was my guy and I turned the car and went to his house.
“They told me he was at the Mater so I went straight there and he was lying on the trolley and looked at me and said ‘I told you I would be shot’.
“I felt so terrible and there were all his bloodstained clothes lying below the trolley, so I took them home to get them washed.
“The next thing I knew I was getting calls from a detective looking for me as I had destroyed police evidence.”
With her ambitious nature and her desire to ensure patients received high quality care, she became a registration inspection officer and subsequently a senior nurse advisor for the then Northern Board.
“Everything I did was because I wanted to do the right thing and then I moved on to become the regional lead nurse consultant in mental health and learning disability at the Public Health Agency,” she says.
As much as she loved her job, Molly’s mother was becoming increasingly frail at the time and she made the decision to retire to become her full-time carer.
After her mum passed away, Molly has spent her time travelling the world with husband Uel. In fact, the couple were in Australia as Covid-19 began to spread. They managed to get home before lockdown and even before she had returned to Northern Ireland, Molly knew she would return to nursing.
“I think that once it’s in your blood, it’s always in your blood,” she says.
Coincidentally, on her return to work, Molly was originally given the sister’s office at Holywell, where photographs of old colleagues still hung on the wall.
Since then she has been working hard to ensure care home residents in the Northern Trust are protected from Covid-19 — inspired by her own experience caring for her mum.
“Having looked after my mum, I know even better how important it is that we look after care home residents,” she says. “And the team I am working with is magnificent, they’re wonderful and we’re all learning to work together — I would love us all to get together for a big hug once this is all over.”