A nurse who has worked at a Kent hospital for 45 years has told of her incredible career and the changes she has witnessed.

Sue Leach started work at the QEQM in Margate as a student nurse when she was just 18, living in the nurses’ home above the hospital. Now 63, she is a clinical nurse educator, and has worked on most of the hospital's wards.

The QEQM is celebrating its 90th birthday today - but few members of staff can claim to have worked there for half its life.

Sue revealed that nursing was not her first career choice.

“I started off in dentistry and was looking for something else," she said. "I applied for the training and got in, much to my parents’ horror.

“They thought it was a dreadful career choice for me, although they did change their minds eventually.”

Her initial training was six weeks in the classroom at QEQM's Devon House, where students practised bed-bathing dummies and injecting oranges.

Sue would smuggle her boyfriend - now husband - to her room, and spent summers sunbathing on the hospital’s flat roof after climbing out of a bathroom window.

“I know Margate hospital inside and out, and I have so many fond memories," she said.

“I have seen a lot of people come and go. I don’t know of anyone who has been around as long as I have.

“I’ve shaken hands with most of the royal family, including the Queen and the Queen Mother, and I was at the opening of the new part of the hospital, when it became the QEQM.”

Sue also worked at the old Seabathing hospital and as a Marie Curie nurse, but most of her career has been spent at the QEQM.

She was made ward sister on Cheerful Sparrows, a female surgical ward, when the new hospital opened, and stayed there for 20 years before retiring - only to return for two days a week in her current role.

Sue says times have changed greatly since she first started out.

"We used to wear starched pinafores and hats," she said. "But when you swung the curtains it would knock your hat off.

“We had no MRI or CT scanners and we used to send patients to theatres without knowing what was going on inside [the patient].

“Sometimes the surgeons would open them up, take a look and close them again because there was nothing they could do - we called those ‘open and shut’ cases.

“Patients would stay in hospital longer and those who were the most well would do the tea trolley in the morning.”

The QEQM originally had no intensive care unit, so staff would not see the very ill patients they now often care for.

Although observations are now taken using machines and entered via an app, Sue remembers when they were taken manually, and recorded on paper.

Staff had to observe a strict hierarchy, with no one addressed by their first name.

Sue said: “I was always Nurse Smith. I remember Mr Butler was the chief surgeon.

“He would do ward rounds once a week and the patients had to be in their beds, sitting up, looking smart and well-kept. Nurses made themselves scarce - we used to hide in the bathrooms!

“We didn’t have lots of physios and occupational therapists and social workers and all the people who make up the multi-disciplinary team who care for patients now.”

Sue also remembers an active social life based around the bar in the doctors’ mess, with regular parties including one that had to be broken up by the chief surgeon after the night sister tried and failed.

At Christmas, each ward had a turkey, which surgeons would come in to carve.

“My first Christmas as a student nurse they brought out a drinks trolley and all the patients had a tipple before lunch," recalls Sue.

“I was also part of the hospital drama group and we put on a panto each Christmas, and wheeled patients in their beds of chairs along to watch it."

Sue has cared for thousands of patients over her career, and also helped develop thousands of nurses.

“I just love looking after people," she said. "I particularly liked general surgery, because you can see someone visibly getting better. They would come in with a problem, have surgery and we would get them better.

“But I also I like looking after staff and seeing them develop and improve.

“We have had some traumatic times and some very sad times but we have also had so much fun and I have loved being part of such a great team at the QEQM."

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