veNTIlATIoN - Green Cross Publishing

34
interview
When Netta Williams started working
in general practice nursing back in
the early days of the profession in
Ireland she felt very isolated having
come from public health nursing in the
community. Not a woman to sit on her
laurels, she put out feelers for others
in the same situation and developed a
small educational forum which was to
become the nucleus of the Irish Practice
Nurses Association.
Netta Williams
INTERVIEW By mIchelle mcdoNAgh
Netta has seen the IPNA develop from an initial three
members to the formidable national organisation it
is today, and over that period, she has continued to
advocate tirelessly on behalf of practice nurses and
practice nurse education.
educational pioneer
She was also responsible for commencing standardised
practice nurse education through the Royal College of
Surgeons.
“They should put on my tombstone, 'she fought long and
hard for mandatory education for practice nurses',” she laughs,
self deprecatingly.
As of February this year, Netta is due to retire on the day
before her 65th birthday — after over 40 years in nursing,
however, she is as passionate and enthusiastic about practice
nursing as ever and plans to continue working in some way
with asthma and respiratory illnesses, which are her main area
of interest.
Netta started her nursing training in 1963 at the age of 18
and has not been out of the profession since then. “When I
went to my training school for interview, the three sister tutors
asked me, “why do you want to do nursing?”, I answered,
‘because I love helping people’. I thought it was the most
original answer at the time but I was being quite honest and I
still feel the same,” she explains.
Having married in Drogheda, Netta was working as a labour
ward sister in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital which was run at
the time by the Medical Missionaries. However tragedy struck
when her husband died while she was expecting her second
child and she moved into public health nursing as she could no
longer keep up the hospital hours.
She worked in public health nursing in Drogheda until the
summer of 1988 when she started working as a practice nurse
in Dublin. She was invited by Professor Bill Shannon to tutor
on a part-time basis at the RCSI’s new Department of General
Practice.
She quickly recognised the need for specialised training in
general practice nursing which was not available in Ireland at
that stage. Along with Peter Harrington, she carried out a study
of all the practice nurses in the country at the time. There were
102 back in 1990, but this has risen to over 1,500 today.
As a result of this study, Netta set up the first Introduction to
Practice Nursing Course in 1991 which amazingly never had to
be advertised because the nurses were so anxious for training
that they put themselves forward.