Working As Staff Nurse At Western Infirmary
I worked as a staff nurse at this fine hospital for several years in the sixties. I was hired to work in the Renal Unit-however, it had not yet opened when I started. I was put to work wherever extra hands were needed until it did.
I worked Friday, Saturday & Sunday nights as I was married with a baby. I remember my husband driving up this approach to drop me off for night duty. It was a great place to work, with marvellous experience - I learned at the "scene of the accident" as we all did then. I nursed Glasgow's first kidney transplant patient, whom I will never forget. I remember being sent out in an ambulance in 1968 (I believe) when a tenement building collapsed during the night of the "Great Storm". There was a tremendous sense of camaraderie between co-workers at the Western - we all helped each other without regard to rank or job e.g. the nuses would give the cleaner a hand if her workload was too great. Similarly, we all mucked in when Casualty was packed with all kinds of emergencies to get the job done. We had walk-in cases, accident victims, victims of crimes etc. There were always police in casualty - either with victims or perpetrators (allegedly). It was never dull.
My husband, a graduate of Glasgow University School Of Medicine also worked here post-grad & looks back fondly on his time at the Western.
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RE: RE: Working As Staff Nurse At Western Infirmary
Hi Eileen, I trained as a medical photographer in the Western Infirmary, (Path Lab) Apparently I was the third trainee they had in the space of a month. I covered Path, Bacteriology and Hematology.
My boss, George Kerr left to emigrate to Canada, and Ian Adam got promoted to the Surgical Unit in the main Building, leaving me, only a year in the job, to run Path. To give me a bit of tuition I was sent to Iain McKie, the photographer in Dermatology. Prof Cappell was in charge of Path at the time and he did a revision of Muir's text book which I provided an upgrade on most of the photographs.
I may well have met you. The Bacteriologist, in charge of the First Kidney transplant patient (George O'Donnell), had me photographing some of the treatments George got and I did all the photographs that went out to the press. The Dailly Express wanted a different shot and I was taken in to photograph George during his mother's visit. I photographed her looking through the glass box. I still have the photograph. I also have a photograph of inside one of the boilers, which was at the back gate in University Avenue. Apparently the boiler-man had fallen asleep and the boiler dried out almost blowing the boiler up. I had to crawl into the tube, several days later I may add, to photograph the point where the boiler melted.
One of my other jobs was to photograph all of the third year students. A number of years later I recognised two people in Oban, It was Drs Mac & Kate Armstrong, two students I had photographed years previously.
We did have some good times in the Western.
Comment from Roy Summers on Wednesday, 28th April 2010.