'After 51 years as a nurse, I will miss my patients the most'

A nurse who has retired after 51 years spent working for the NHS has said she will miss her patients and the camaraderie with her colleagues.

Carol Wilkins, 67, from Castleford, retired from Mid Yorkshire Teaching NHS Trust on 21 November after working at Pinderfields Hospital in Wakefield, Dewsbury Hospital and Pontefract Hospital.

Her first role was at a hospital in South Elmsall that no longer exists and by the time she retired, she was working as a discharge liaison sister at Pinderfields.

She said the biggest change she had witnessed was seeing robots perform surgery.

"It absolutely fascinates me. I just can't get my head around it," she said.

"The other change is the beds. When I started out the beds were the old metal beds with bars - they didn't go up and down, so if you were tall, and I'm quite tall, you had to be bent over.

"Now we've got really fabulous beds that go up and down and sit patients up and position them. It's stuff like that that's really improved.

"When I started out there were no hoists, we didn't have any training, it was just purely physical. We physically lifted grown men into a bath."

Ms Wilkins said she would be keeping a memory box of items from her time in the NHS, including a print of a programme from the prizegiving ceremony she attended after qualifying from her training in the 1970s.

"I've got my first fob watch that my nana bought me when I started training, I've got my Covid medal, which we got presented with. I'm keeping a uniform and I'm going to bob in some photographs."

But she said the thing she would miss most was the patients.

"I love all my patients, but I think a big part of the NHS is a family. So it's all the people that you work with.

"I'm going to miss the camaraderie and the really dark humour that goes on. People think, 'what on earth are they laughing at?' But it's the camaraderie."

During her five decades in healthcare, Ms Wilkins has seen students become managers and babies she helped deliver return to hospital as adults with their own families.

"When I worked in the special care baby unit a mum actually named her baby after me," she said.

"I thought 'I can't believe that' and I have actually seen that girl, well she's not a girl anymore, she's a woman with her own children."

Ms Wilkins has also met and treated celebrities in her time at the hospital - including Chris Kamara, who visits Pinderfields every Christmas, she said.

"I met Davy Jones from The Monkees. I looked after him. He fell off a horse at Pontefract Racecourse and broke his leg," she said.

"I was probably maybe 20 at the time. I'll never forget that. I loved The Monkees."

In her retirement, Ms Wilkins said she hoped to do more baking and spend more time on holiday with her partner, who recently retired after 21 years as a milkman.

"We have a caravan just on the edge of the North York Moors. We're hoping for a fabulous summer like we had this year so that we can go and spend as much time as we can in it," she said.

"We've got two little dogs, two little miniature dachshunds. Even though they've got little legs, they do like to walk.

"And I've got a sourdough obsession. So I'll be able to put a little bit more time into that because it's a really technical thing sourdough baking.

"She's in the fridge at the minute because she's resting and she's waiting for me to stop wrapping Christmas presents up and then I can start."

But first she has booked a trip to Asia with a friend. The pair will be flying to Hong Kong on New Year's Day before taking a cruise around Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore and Bali.

"I'm one of those people, I just get on with it and I've always embraced change," she said.

"Just go and do the best that you can, that's what I always say."

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