Janet Amies knows her way around Oamaru Hospital better than most people.
Mrs Amies has spent almost half a century training and working there in various nursing roles.
Yesterday, she worked her last shift at the hospital, closing out her 45-year nursing career.
One of five children, she stumbled into nursing, seeing it as an opportunity for her to move out of home, and have her own career.
"In my day, of course, it was nursing or teaching, or being a secretary," Mrs Amies said.
Nursing, as it turns out, could not have been a better choice.
"It’s the best decision I have ever made," she said.
"I have never regretted one minute of it."
Mrs Amies started her training at Oamaru Hospital in February 1973, and moved into the three-storey nurses’ home.
Life in the nurses’ home was "fabulous", she said.
"It was just amazing with all the nurses all around us and other friends"
But it was also very strict. The doors were always locked at nights, and the sisters were very protective of the young nurses.
While patient care was of course the main focus, there was also a "huge amount" of cleaning involved in the job.
"That place was cleaned within an inch of its life. I mean, everything was focused on absolute hygiene, hygiene, hygiene," she said.
The old Oamaru hospital on the hill was a lot bigger than Oamaru’s current hospital.
She graduated in 1976, and lived in the nurses’ home until she got married, age 24, and later took about three years off to have children. Her first son, Tim, was born in 1981, and then she got pregnant with twins, Chantelle and Adam. At one stage, she had three children under 19 months.
The nursing community at Oamaru Hospital, and the class of ’73, were like family to Mrs Amies — and that family had helped her get through some of her darkest times.
They were there to support her when her son Adam died at seven months old of a cot death, when her marriage broke up, when she was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis age 35, and when her son Tim died at age 14 of meningococcal septicemia.
"It’s got me through the worst times in my life."
She remained close with the class of ’73, and was the last of the nurses she trained with to still be treading the wards.
"We’ve lost a couple as we’ve gone along, and things have happened, but we’re all very, very close together. We all get together and have fun and remember the good old days."
When the hospital started downsizing in the 1990s, ahead of the move to the new hospital in 2000 — she was told she was being made redundant the day her son Tim died in 1995. She started to look for other opportunities at the hospital, and secured one job as a phlebotomist at the laboratory, and another as a district nurse.
About 15 years ago, she was offered a job as the hospital’s diabetes nurse. She had a personal interest in diabetes, because her late son Tim, had been diagnosed with type 1 at 11-months-old.
"In my wonderful way, thinking, ‘Well I can give something back to the world for Tim’, I thought I would take it on," she said.
"I’ve really always loved diabetes — and I’ve loved it more as I’ve got older. I feel like I really understand it more now," she says. "I still feel like I’ve got the capacity to take on board so much, if I wanted to — and that’s what I’m probably going to miss."
Diabetes care had changed a lot over the years, and new technology and drugs were improving the lives of so many people with type 1, 2 and gestational diabetes, she said.
"Holistic" is a word Mrs Amies did not like to use very much, but it was an approach she had taken to when caring for people with diabetes.
"You don’t just focus on the diabetes, you actually focus on the whole person," she said.
There’s also a lot of personal responsibility, but all you can do is be there encouraging them and do it with kindness."
Her personal experiences navigating the health system had helped her be able to relate to the struggles her patients went through.
Despite all of the changes at Oamaru Hospital over the years — moving from the old hospital on the hill to the new hospital at Takaro Park, the various restructures — Mrs Amies said there were so many things about nursing in Oamaru that remained the same.
"At the end of the day, the patients are still the same, the nurses are still the same, the care is still the same, you may be delivering it differently ... but the care is basically the same.
In her retirement, she was looking forward to being able to spend more time with her and husband Doug’s eight grandchildren, and taking more trips away in their caravan.
