Nurse of almost 50 years says career 'best decision'

Helen Parfitt says "making a difference" is the best part of the job

A children’s nurse who is retiring after almost 50 years says her choice of career was “the single best decision of my life”.

Helen Parfitt, 69, who worked her final shift at Musgrove Park Hospital, Taunton, Somerset, in late September, said: “I can’t believe the time has come to leave”.

Ms Parfitt spent her entire career at the hospital and saw big changes in healthcare, but added: “People don't change, people are just as frightened and grateful.”

“It is amazing that people remember nurses even a long time a long time down the line,” she said.

Ms Parfitt decided to go into nursing at age 11 after watching the care her mother received over an 18-month period for a heart infection.

She worked her first shift at the Musgrove in 1976 and would spend 48 years and one month at the hospital.

During that time new treatments and vaccines dramatically cut the mortality rates for diseases such as meningitis and cystic fibrosis.

She remarked that children who would have died from cystic fibrosis before the age of 10 were now growing up and going on to have children of their own.

Helen Parfitt (back row, far right) with her graduation class after training at Great Ormond Street Hospital

But not all change has been for the better, Ms Parfitt said.

“One of the things I I feel quite strongly about is that I got paid to do my training.

"Now people have to pay to be students and come out with a debt and that’s hard,” she said.

In the early 1990s, Ms Parfitt went into nurse teaching - setting up the hospitals Return to Practice programme and helping overseas nurses get their registration in the UK.

“To begin with, I felt guilty about not doing the hands on, but at least I've got a lot of people doing the hands on,” she said.

In 2009, she joined Musgrove Park Hospital’s pharmacy team as its first medicines management nurse.

Prescription charts she helped design for children’s pain relief and epidurals, adult acute pain and variable rates of insulin infusion are still being used today.

When asked the best thing about the job, she said: “Feeling that that I've done something that made a difference - whether it was me personally or the people I taught, or some system I'd set up, or doing some research that made life easier for us.”

A spokesperson for Somerset NHS Foundation Trust said: "We are forever grateful for Helen’s extraordinary dedication to the NHS, which has seen her showcase remarkable commitment to patient care, nurse training, and the future of healthcare.”