Nursing memories still vivid for care home resident
Bupa Fergusson Care Home resident Kitty Cassan knows exactly what to do to take someone’s temperature, she was a nurse for 14 years back in Liverpool.
The 89 year old was a nurse in Sefton Hospital, Liverpool and immigrated to New Zealand with her family in 1974. Kitty says she still has the handwritten note from her Nurse Matron Mrs Kennedy wishing her well as she moved across the world to a new home.
“Mrs Kennedy was a wonderful Matron and a wonderful person. The advice she gave me was you have to have heart to be a nurse. It’s good to have the medical side and know what you should and shouldn’t do but you have to have heart.”
Nursing training was certainly different for Kitty, where she lived in a dormitory in the nursing training school with the other students.
“I was always interested in the human body and I liked looking after people.”
Kitty tried to continue her hospital nursing in New Zealand but put family first as her daughters were starting a new school in a new country and she didn’t drive so couldn’t do district nursing.
Even though Kitty went on to a career at the British High Commission, she fondly remembers one famous patient she nursed - a grandmother to one of the Beatles.
“I remember the woman wouldn’t take medicine and so when I said let's both take the medicine in water. I ended up with her water thrown all over me. She wasn’t stupid.”
Kitty was treated to a glass of wine and cake to celebrate International Nurses Day this week with the Registered Nurses who care and support her in her Upper Hutt care home.
