Nurse retires after 50 years working in the NHS

A nurse has retired after spending 50 years working for the NHS in Hull.

Gary Hewitt joined the service as a teenager in 1976 and has worked mostly in emergency medicine.

His career has included training ferry staff in emergency resuscitation as well as working as a medic on a film set, treating actor Tom Hardy after he was injured while making the crime movie Bronson.

The 68-year-old said working as a charge nurse in Hull Royal Infirmary's Emergency Department meant experiencing "something different every day".

"None of us working here are prone to panic and you just deal with whatever comes in the door," he said.

"You never come away from a shift without learning something."

Over the years, Gary has worked on a pioneering mobile unit to treat emergency patients outside the hospital and developed the Minor Injuries Unit at Beverley.

Gary said that, even on holiday, he has been called on to use his medical skills, once helping police officers with a man having a cardiac arrest in Glasgow Central Station.

"I remember one time, being in a café in Beverley, when this man pointed at me and shouted 'that's the guy who sewed my finger back on,'" he said.

He was presented with an award to mark his 50 years of service by the hospital trust's interim chief executive Lyn Simpson.

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