Cape Town nurse is set to retire after almost 42 years of service.
Cape Town, South Africa (18 June 2021) – A woman who fulfilled her childhood dream of becoming a nurse will soon retire after almost 42 years of service.
She began her career at Groote Schuur hospital in Cape Town in the year 1980.
“I started on 1 June 1980 as a student nurse, so I got to work throughout the hospital. After training, I was one of the first students selected for the integrated midwifery course, and I came back from that as a Registered Nurse. In 1988 I started working in the haematology unit and then the haematology clinic, and that’s where I stayed for 30 years until the management post for night duty came up,” Rachel Charles said.
On night duty there were two managers, so the hospital decided to divide the facility. Respectively they covered the surgical pavilion, trauma and emergency unit, theatre and maternity.
“So I get to know all the nurses in different pavilions. It’s a very different experience working nights, but I enjoy it. It’s like coming back to my roots as a student where I got to work in all areas of the hospital,” she adds.
In the past 4 decades, she got a lot to do with leukaemia patients.
“There was an 18-year-old girl diagnosed with acute leukaemia. Her brother donated bone marrow and she received a transplant. She was a factory worker and during her chemo, she was very sick. They said she would never be able to have children. But she got better and once she was well she went and studied to be a nurse at UWC. Now she’s a registered nurse, and she’s married with two children.”
Those are the kind of stories that kept her going in haematology.
“You’re like a family there. Yes, there are sad cases, but there are a lot of good stories to tell. More positive than negative,” Charles said.
There are also lots of stories from night duty.
“One night there was a 23-year-old mother that gave birth with a lot of complications. They had to do an emergency hysterectomy and the baby wasn’t doing well, the doctors thought he wouldn’t make it. I went down to the baby in the nursery and I said, ‘hello baby, you must make it because you will be your mother’s only baby.’ And that baby looked up at me with big dark eyes and followed my voice. Later I heard he was doing well. That for me is the reward of nursing,” she said.
She’s turning 60 next year and will be retiring.
“I’m very creative so when I retire I’m looking forward to doing things like flower arranging, and crafts that I never had time for. But I also want to write a book about all the stories from the hospital. When I think of all the good things that I’ve experienced, I don’t have any regrets about becoming a nurse.”
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