Celebrating 50 years of being nurse
BOARDING a train to Sydney as a 17-year-old to embark on a new adventure, Marlene Cochrane never knew the decision would transform her life.
Ms Cochrane is celebrating 50 years as a nurse, and in that time she has seen incredible changes in the health care industry during a career that has encompassed work at hospitals in Australia and the UK.
Born and bred in Townsville, Ms Cochrane started her training at Prince Henry Hospital in Sydney and after completing a rigorous and demanding course, she graduated as a general nurse.
“For me, the love of nursing was there from the very beginning,” Ms Cochrane said.
“When I started in 1968, trainees did a preliminary 12 weeks where we learned to make a bed and bathe patients, lots of cleaning and scrubbing and then there was also anatomy and physiology to study and exams to pass.
“It was tough; there was a lot of d i s c i p l i n e and we weren’t allowed to ask questions. i
“Many of the girls left after the first 12 weeks because it was pretty challenging. But we still had fun, living in the nurse’s home together on the hospital grounds.
“We worked until the day was done or until we were told we could go home, and we never left unless everyone on shift could go at the same time.”
The 70-year-old has accumulated a lifetime of nursing experience, from helping women to home birth in socially disadvantaged parts of northern Wales, to becoming Queensland’s first trained neonatal nurse to work outside of Brisbane.
These days she’s an afterhours supervisor at Mater Private Hospital.
“I came home to Townsville in the mid ’70s after working and travelling around Europe in a Kombi van and – at that time – midwifery and neonatal medicine was really taking off,” Ms Cochrane said.
“It was just after the Vietnam War and maternity care was really busy. Women were starting to have more control and choice around how they wanted to birth. “The Mater offered me my first job as a midwife on returning home to Townsville and I later took a role as Charge Nurs Nurse at Townsville General Hospital, assisting with setting up its first neonatal care nursery. “
Ms Cochrane went on to broaden her professional horizons even further, returning to university in the first cohort at the newly established Nursing Sciences at James Cook University and completing a Bachelor of Nursing Science.
“The tasks of nursing have changed a lot in my career, but the attitude of nurses has not. It comes back to those core values of respect and compassion,” she said.