A Lifetime Of Caring

Sally Jorden began her nursing career in 1960, the same year that The Beatles formed, Harold Macmillan was our Prime Minister and the new ready-sliced loaf cost the equivalent of 5p.

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“I have been a nurse since I was eighteen,” says Sally, now 75 and a clinical nurse specialist in breast care at Southend General Hospital. “I had always wanted to be a nurse.

“As a child I used to bandage my teddies and as a teenager I would rush in to watch Emergency Ward 10 on the television and I’d think, ‘Gosh, I’d like to wear that uniform.’ I actually trained and started working at Southend General, so I have come full circle!

“Through the years the changes in nursing have been dramatic. When I began we just looked after the basic needs of our patients, we washed and cared for them, took their blood pressure, served their meals and so on. We did our best to help them with their psychological problems, although we didn’t call it that, then. We just listened to what they said. We weren’t given performance targets as nurses are now.

“No-one really talked about cancer then. If anyone aged under 30 had a lump in their breast, doctors wouldn’t really be interested in investigating further, the lady would be considered far too young to have cancer.