The 75-year-old is officially retiring today, following a career during which she has nursed in many facets of the profession in New Zealand, Argentina and the United Kingdom.
"It’s a long time, but it’s been a great experience. I wouldn’t have chosen any other career."
Ms Dennison graduated in 1962 after three years of hands-on training at Oamaru Hospital.
In late 1963, she became a ward sister at Dannevirke Community Hospital, before moving to Dunedin to become a district nurse.
It was there that she met her future husband. He was not a doctor, she said.
"He was a geography student at the University of Otago. We both came from Oamaru originally. We met through a mutual friend."
They married, and then in late 1965 they moved to Wellington, where she became a nursing tutor at Hutt Hospital.
In 1966, they made the life-changing decision to go to Argentina after reading a newspaper article about "grand opportunities" for people to teach there.
She was employed as a college nurse and health science teacher.
"It was a real culture shock.
"The first 18 months or so, I was quite homesick. But once I picked up the language, that homesickness went."
While there, they adopted a young orphan boy — the first of six children they adopted from around the world over the years.
She said the decision to adopt was easy: "We wanted children and he was there. He needed a home."
In 1972, they went to England, where she nursed in a Worcester hospital.
During that time, there was a lot of publicity about the Vietnam War and its effects on the children there.
So when they decided to return to New Zealand, they stopped in Vietnam on the way and adopted a second child.
On their return, they set up home in Evansdale, north of Dunedin, and Ms Dennison worked at Cherry Farm Hospital as a psychiatric nurse.
She later transferred to Dunedin Hospital.
In the early 1990s, she took her first and only break from nursing.
"I had to because I got disillusioned with what was happening in the health sector.
"I opened a cafe, which was quite therapeutic. I did that for about 18 months."
All the while, a friend kept asking her to go back to nursing, and in 1995 she returned as an emergency department nurse at Dunedin Hospital.She later became a nurse educator at the hospital.
Ms Dennison said her trip to Argentina in her younger years had taught her many life lessons — mainly, that it was possible for her to do anything she put her mind to.
"If you go to a country and learn a new language, and you survive and don’t die of homesickness, you realise that you can actually do something if you really want to do it.
"You realise that you’re capable — the barriers become easier to overcome."
That self-confidence came to the fore between 1999 and 2000, when she worked with the district health board to get a chief nurse position reinstated at the hospital.
"The health reforms had gotten rid of charge nurses and supervisors and chief nurses.
"I was part of a group that worked to get a chief nurse position back for the hospital. We [nurses] needed leadership."
Ms Dennison said she had always believed it was important for nursing students to have a safe environment where they could learn from their mistakes.
So in 2001, she helped establish a nursing clinical skills laboratory at the hospital — something she is very proud of.
She has been the operations manager of the facility until her retirement today.
While nursing is a skill set, Ms Dennison said it was also a way of life.
So despite her retirement, she had no plans to stop nursing.Interspersed with visits to her family, she now plans to volunteer in Samoa by setting up a nursing skills laboratory there.
"It’s pretty hard to give it up completely. I’ll always be a nurse and I’ll always be involved in nursing. I want to use my skills in a more voluntary role now."
● Dunedin nurse Sharyn McGarry recently retired after 50 years in the profession.
