Tonsil-op tot notches up 50 years in nursing

A nurse is celebrating the 50th anniversary of her joining the NHS.

Janet Alderton, associate director of patient safety at University Hospital Tees, started her career as a cadet nurse at Hartlepool General Hospital in 1976.

She spent 20 years in midwifery before entering patient safety and risk management, which she called her "passion", and had wanted to be a nurse since she had her tonsils removed at St Hilda's Hospital in Hartlepool when she was aged just three.

"It's my earliest memory, sitting in a cot there and telling my mum I would be working at that hospital when I was older," she said.

After qualifying as a registered nurse in 1981, she started working in emergency care, trauma, and orthopaedics at St Hilda's.

In 1984 she made the jump to midwifery and began working at North Tees General Hospital in Stockton.

She said she had only ever done six weeks of maternity training but "never looked back", spending the next 20 years helping deliver babies.

"It's not necessarily about the babies, it's the mums and families, making sure they're as safe as possible and getting them from the beginning to the end," she said.

"The culmination was having a baby that was well and alive at the end, and if there were complications we could handle them with the family prepared."

She laughed at the "let's get on with it" attitude of being a midwife.

"We're quite rough with babies compared to other people, but it's that strength and experience and knowledge midwives have and I think families have confidence by seeing midwives do what they do properly."

In 2005, shortly after having children of her own, she started working in patient safety.

Policies and attitudes within the NHS changed greatly during the 1990s, she said, including new national standards being issued for hospitals to meet.

"I did a few extra hours and they grew into my passion. I moved from a couple of hours to working full time in the whole thing.

"Seeing it develop into a recognised profession and the progress being made nationally gives me great confidence for the future."

Looking back on half a century of NHS service, she said: "If you break me in two, I've got NHS printed all the way through me like a piece of Blackpool rock.

"It's the people that work in the NHS that make it what it is.

"The ethos of those people have kept me going and allowed me to proceed with my passion.

"It's also the patients - without them, we wouldn't have a job - but we need to make sure we're providing them really good care and that's where I've come from all my life."

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