Nurse retires after 50 years of service
THE NHS is one of the largest organisations in the world – and Newbury woman Carol Irlam gave decades of her life to it.
Mrs Irlam has retired after 50 years of service as a nurse and she still remembers her first days on the job.
She was born in Newbury, but moved to London at the age of 18 to complete her training.
She had to live in for six months and was under a 12am curfew – with a home sister who would tick her colleagues in and out.
She said times were different, with her first pay packet being £47 and her rent at £22.
And when the nurses went on their drug rounds, they gave patients their tablets with Guinness and wine.
The hospitals held pantomime-like shows with everyone from cardiologists to nurses taking part.
She stayed there from 1973 to around 1978 before going to Reading for midwifery, then moved to Manchester, working in a cancer hospital before being an A&E sister.
Mrs Irlam worked at the old Battle Hospital for a while before going into district nursing locally – spending around 18 years at Eastfield Surgery.
The mother-of-two and grandmother-of-two retired from there at 58 and has spent the past 10-and-a-half years working in the day surgery unit at West Berkshire Community Hospital.
She said: “I have enjoyed every minute of it and I have met some fabulous patients – it is a great honour to look after people at their most vulnerable.
“You get so much joy and you learn so much from them.”
The 69-year-old said the struggles of the job have been mostly surrounding pay.
“You shouldn’t have to work extra shifts to have a normal life,” she said.
“When I was in London, everyone knew nurses were poorly paid and you would go out to the market with your outside uniform on, and in Sheppard’s Bush they would give you apples and pears and say ‘here you are nursey you don’t get any money’. “Newbury is a special town. “It has been a privilege to be a nurse.”