Nurse Lesley Williams, 81, reflects on 50 years of West Suffolk Hospital, in Bury St Edmunds, and her long career
The year was 1961: Queen Elizabeth was on the throne, Harold Macmillan was Prime Minister, birth control pills became available on the NHS, The Beatles began performing under their new name at Liverpool’s Cavern Club and Lesley Williams started her career in nursing.
Fast forward more than 60 years and Lesley is still involved in nursing – as a parish nurse and with student nurse training at the University of East Anglia – and is still a well-known face at West Suffolk Hospital, in Bury St Edmunds.
Lesley started her career training at the Royal Free Hospital in London before joining Sudbury’s Walnutree Hospital for seven years from 1965 and later joined St Mary’s Hospital, in Hospital Road, Bury St Edmunds, before it transferred to the ‘new’ West Suffolk Hospital, in Hardwick Lane, in 1974.
And while her career has since taken her into student nurse education and on to parish nursing – via the Seychelles and Tanzania – Lesley still remembers the early days of the ‘new’ West Suffolk Hospital when it opened in 1974.
She described the new building as ‘jaw dropping’ thanks to its new equipment, while one of her first jobs at Hardwick Lane was to take plastic covers off the new handbasins.
But according to Lesley, while the hospital itself was new in 1974, one thing remained of the old site and that was its family feel.
“Belonging to the West Suffolk is like being part of a huge family. They look after you and help you and I had a lot of support,” said Lesley.
“West Suffolk to me has been the foundation of my life here.
“We had a visit to the new hospital in 1973/74 and we thought it was amazing. There were all the modern facilities, including a lift chair to get people in the bath which we had never had before.
“It was so exciting. When the new hospital opened it had visitors from all over the world as it was the first ‘best buy’ hospital, it was quite famous for the first couple of years.
“There was a really nice family feeling that the various teams in the hospital still belonged to this one family. Many, many staff stayed for many years. There is a magnet here about the West Suffolk Hospital.”
Lesley remembers the hospital car park always being empty in the early years, while in 1974, when there was a strike, Lesley continued to work and did extra hours in the hospital laundry to help.
However, the laundry was not a natural fit for her skills.
“They put me on the sheet machine, which was a huge roll coming towards me with the sheets,” she said. “However I was transfixed by the shirt machine and I was in fits of giggles and messed up the sheets. I say I can look after patients but I haven’t got a clue in the laundry.”
Lesley worked hard, ‘kept getting promoted’ and eventually moved into nurse education – becoming director of nurse education and potentially helping thousands of student nurses across Suffolk and Norfolk over the decades.
In the early days, when student nurses joined the hospital they would move to accommodation on site ‘bringing everything but the kitchen sink’ and Lesley would go up to welcome them on the Sunday before the course started.
“I was a mother to them,” she said. “Again, there was a feeling we would look after them. One thing which is true for all nurses is we can only do our job down to the support we get. That support comes from family and good neighbours.
“I remember when the student nurses got their finals I was up the post office with them at 4am to get their results.”
Lesley said West Suffolk had always had a very good hospital library – ‘which has since moved and is even better’ – which she used a lot to encourage students.
“I also used to put student nurses in wheelchairs so they knew how to look after the next patients,” said Lesley.
“Then I was the first nurse to wear a trouser suit here, as I asked the wonderful sewing room we used to have to make me some trousers.”
Improvements Lesley has seen at the hospital over the past 50 years include the X-ray department move and new facilities such as the Martin Corke Day Surgery and eye treatment centre.
Meanwhile, outdated ideas and practices had also evolved.
Now, Lesley is eagerly anticipating the new hospital set to be built in the coming years, having been invited to some early Zoom meetings about the project.
“Here, I think there is enough promise for it to be a success, it is all looking really good and exciting, just as the ‘new’ hospital was back in 1974,” she said.
In a career of many highlights, Lesley said the zenith was gaining her masters from the UEA (thanks to funding and support from West Suffolk Hospital) which, she said, had given her a sense of alliance to the university and she still visited to speak to student nurses, an experience she described as ‘a delight’.
And she said their questions were often surprising, with one student asking at the end of Lesley’s talk: “What face cream do you use?”
Now aged 81, Lesley is still involved in nursing in a parish nurse capacity, based at Christ Church Moreton Hall.
“Parish nursing involves looking after physical, social and mental health. My job is to listen and care for people and say prayers with them, I might become involved with families who have a terminally ill member, while I help with the dementia group and I do a lot of falls prevention exercises and run classes for the elderly.
“I feel very privileged to be part of it.”
Lesley was also a member of St John Ambulance for 22 years, giving up only last year.
And she says while she left the NHS in 2015, she had not ’retired’ at all.
“In life, people have got lots of skills and if they are able and want to the work will benefit them and others if they carry on,” said Lesley, who also volunteers in the West Suffolk Hospital chaplaincy on Tuesdays two-three times a month.
Lesley’s two daughters have both had some involvement with the West Suffolk, while her late husband Michael was a porter there following his retirement from policing.
She describes nursing as ‘the most satisfying job out there’.
“I just feel so lucky: doing my training in London and coming to Suffolk and then being in nurse education gave me so many opportunities… and now being a parish nurse, helping people again.
“Nursing has always been a privilege and an opportunity,” she said.
