Lancashire matron Joan knows best after her 40-year career

From the age of four, when she went into hospital to have her tonsils removed, Joan Woodcock wanted to become a nurse.

In 1966 her dream came true, when she found herself standing outside the matron’s office at Blackburn Royal Infirmary as a 16-year-old cadet.

Now, following a career spanning more than 40 years, Blackburn-born Joan has written a book of her experiences, from her early encounter with an axe injury to a patient who swallowed their suppositories.

From an early encounter with an axe injury to a patient who swallowed their suppositories, there was never a dull moment.

She recounts her four decades as a nurse at ten hospitals and medical units across Lancashire in her warts-and-all book.

Matron Knows Best, out this week, recalls tales of the 1960s when every hospital ward relied on its no-nonsense matron to keep things shipshape.

When the role was phased out 40 years ago, it seemed the medical matriarch would live on only in TV re-runs of Carry On films.

“When the matrons were replaced with managers an era of nursing died,” said Joan, 60, who started her career in 1966 at Blackburn Royal Infirmary as a 16-year-old cadet under the traditional matron regime.

From the very first day she recalled being proud of her uniform.

Shoes had to be flat and black, cardigans and hair ribbons were navy blue, make-up was out of the question and a wedding ring the only piece of jewellery allowed.

“When we had the old fashioned matrons they were responsible for the patient care, the cleanliness and the nursing staff.

"They ruled the wards,” said Joan, who grew up in a two up two down terrace house in Florence Street with her parents and sister Pat.

A form of matron was reintroduced last year where one senior charge nurse – dubbed a ‘modern matron’ was brought back into hospitals thoughout the UK.

But according to Joan the matron with her starched uniform and iron discipline that she remembers, still remains legendary.

“Now it’s so much more targets and budgets and paperwork and the management these days have to attend so many meetings they can’t know what's happening at ground level.

"The staff and nurses are still as good as they always were, it’s the regimes that I don’t agree with.”

During the 1970s Joan moved on from BRI to work at Queen’s Park Hospital, and the isolation hospital Park Lee — where the East Lancashire Hospice now stands.

She also worked in A&E at Wythenshawe Hospital (where she says she learned to swear) and Blackpool Victoria.

She cared for terminal cancer patients and even worked as a nurse for Kirkham prison before her final posting as a crisis worker for Lancashire Police treating victims of sexual assault and rape — all of which are documented in the 368-page book.

But Joan says it is her days in Blackburn that stand out most in her memory.

“My most favourite memories come from my days working for matron at the Blackburn hospitals.

"We could refer to her only as matron, if you called her by her first name (Margaret) she’d have your guts for garters,” said Joan, who lived in Belthorn with her husband Bill and son Mark until the late 1970s.

“I remember cleaning a bed one day and she came to check it.

"She got on her hands and knees on the floor, crawled under the bed and wiped her finger along the base.

“She came back with a bit of dust on her finger and nearly spit it up my nostrils. I tell you what I didn’t do it again.”

Joan had dreamed of being a nurse since she was four-years-old after going in hospital to have her tonsils removed.

“My mum was really poorly and in hospital in Blackpool and I was in the Manchester children’s hospital,” explained Joan who now lives in Lytham.

“So no-one would visit me because my mum needed my dad more.

“I’ll never forget what the nurses were like, they would give me comics and encourage other patients visitors to include me.

"From that day I knew that’s what I wanted to do," Joan said in her softly spoken tones.

And it was her often hospitalised mother, who lived in Great Harwood until she died, who inspired her to be a good nurse.

She explained: “Mum taught me a lot about her care and what patients need by her own experiences.

"She was in and out of hospital a lot so she was a good sounding board. Mum’s died now, but she’d have loved this book.”

Joan’s favourite story from the book is a memory from Blackburn Royal Infirmary.

“One patient I’ll never forget was a young lad in his twenties, older than I was at the time.

“His skull was crushed during an accident at work where a metal plate fell on his head.

“We didn’t have intensive care then so he was treated on the ward.

"They thought that if he survived he would have serious brain damage and it was very touch and go.

“Then one morning I went on duty and was chatting away to him as I always did, and he started to cough then said ‘who are you?’ I couldn’t believe it.

“He’d made no communication not even with his eyes for months and suddenly he’d spoken to me.

"I remember rushing to sister Nancy Adams and his mum, we were all so happy. I’ll never forget that day.”

Her dad had served in the navy and after being demobbed, found work in a factory, while her mum was a book binder.

Like many others, in Blackburn, luxury came in the form of a tin bath in front of the open fire on Friday nights, with water being heated up on the small gas stove.

Joan arrived for her first day as a cadet in September 1966 and with her contemporaries was handed her obviously pre-owned uniforms in the nurses quarters, which were tiled in drab green, brown and white and looked not unlike a public convenience.

A quick tour of the hospital took her to pathology, haematology, histology, the central sterile supply department and the kitchens, before ending in the new tower block knows as the New Wing, which had only recently been opened by Princess Anne.

One thing that struck her was that nowhere in the hospital was there so much as a finger mark, with cleaners busily mopping and scrubbing the building, even the basement.

Her first assignment was the x-ray department with chief radiologist was Mr Wilson.

After a week filling in forms, she was actually asked to look after an actual patient — 80-year-old Agnes, who ran a small tobacconist’s in the town centre.

Agnes had been hit viciously around the head with an axe by a customer who vaulted the counter and demanded money.

He ran out as another customer came in but wasn’t able to scale the high walls to escape.

Things were changing rapidly in the NHS by the time Joan began her student training in 1968, with the Salmon report heralding the end of the old-fashioned matron system and the creation of the chief nursing officer, to report to hospital management.

Matron Knows Best, the true story of a 1960s NHS nurse, costs £12.99.