Health Editor Barry Nelson talks to nurse Janet Lloyd, who is packing away her uniform after 45 years on the wards.

A NURSE who has spent the best part of five decades caring for patients bowed out in style yesterday. Janet Lloyd, who began her nurse training way back in 1959, worked her last shift on the Priory Ward at Guisborough General Hospital before joining colleagues at a party to celebrate her retirement.

While she has spent time on the wards at Leed General Infirmary, North Ormesby Hospital and Poole Hospital, the bulk of her 45 years service has been at her local, home town hospital.

Not surprisingly, Janet, 62, who is clinical leader of the Priory Ward at Guisborough, says the job has changed greatly since the day she first donned her uniform.

"It has changed an awful lot. Maybe some of us feel that some things are not as good as they used to be but at the end of the day the care to patients is good and that is what matters," says Janet, who also spent some time as a sister at Middlesbrough's Carter Bequest Hospital in the mid 1990s.

She is certainly impressed at the new crop of trainee nurses coming through from Teesside University and is pleased that nurses are finally being given the freedom to develop their skills.

Janet strongly disagrees with anyone who suggests that today's nurses are more interested in careers and technology than old-fashioned caring.

"I disagree with that view totally. We have quite a few young staff here as well as students from Teesside University. I can honestly say that I have been very impressed by them and they have all enjoyed their time here."

Janet, who is looking forward to spending more time with her husband Paul and her three grown-up children and four grandchildren, is pleased that nurses are to be encouraged to develop specialist skills.

Recently the Government announced that it wants to train nurses to become a new type of surgical practitioner, carrying out a range of minor operations. There are already increasing numbers of specialist "nurse consultants" working in North-East hospitals.

"It's really good. It means that nursing staff are professionally developing. We can't stand still, we have got to move on, we have got to develop our skills," she says.

Janet has no regrets about going into nursing, recollecting that with a father who worked as an ambulance attendant at a nearby ironstone mine, caring for the sick was probably a family tradition.

"I think my future was planned out for me by my father. Really, I couldn't imagine doing anything else," she says.

Janet knows she is going to miss the patients and her colleagues but is ready to shift her focus from work to home. "There comes a time when you have to do it. You have got to give time to your family and it is time to do that now."

At her retirement party, Martin Gilligan, head of locality teams at Langbaurgh Primary Care Trust, said: "Janet's commitment, hard work and enthusiasm will be certainly missed. She has led her staff through several organisational changes, culminating in them achieving nurse development unit status. We wish her well for a long and happy retirement."