The Nursing Oral History Project - User contributions [en]

Diana Grant-Mackie

2025-05-20T05:25:46Z

NZNO:

GRANT-MACKIE, Diana Margaret (nee Ley). Born September 30, 1937. Passed away September 10, 2019.

{{Abstract V2
|banner_image=Diana_Grant-Mackie_Photo.jpg
|banner_image_caption=Diana Grant-Mackie
|audio_description_one=The second of five children, Diana Grant-Mackie (nee Ley) was born in Whakatane in 1937, and moved to a farm in Whangamata at the age of nine. She left school at age seventeen with school certificate having attended boarding schools in Hamilton and Auckland. Her interest in nursing came from reading a book about Marie Curie and Edward Jenner, as well as a brush with cow pox as a young girl.
|audio_file_one=Diana_Grant-Mackie_Audio_01.mp3
|audio_description_two=Diana entered nursing school in Auckland in 1956, aged eighteen. There were a lot of country girls in her cohort at Auckland Hospital because the private school city girls tended to go to Green Lane Hospital. During the preliminary training the girls were taught practical tasks like bed making and giving bed pans. Some of Diana’s early clinical experiences involved caring for children with tuberculosis and other diseases at Princess Mary Hospital. She enjoyed working with children, but some of the experiences of working with terminally ill children were upsetting, especially as a first year nurse. At the nurses’ home the student nurses tended to provide support for each other by talking late into the night.
|audio_file_two=Diana_Grant-Mackie_Audio_02.mp3
|audio_description_three=She explains that the nursing students gained orthopaedic experience at Middlemore Hospital and operating theatre experience at Green Lane Hospital. However, community nursing was not part of their training. Diana recollects that nursing students were financially better off than university students and other female professionals, especially since their board and lodgings were provided.
|audio_file_three=Diana_Grant-Mackie_Audio_03.mp3
|audio_description_four=In the hospital there were strict rules and a clear hierarchy. The doctors had a superior status, ‘doctors were sort of gods’. The Ward Sisters also had to be obeyed and the student nurses had no status.
|audio_file_four=Diana_Grant-Mackie_Audio_04.mp3
|audio_description_five=The nurses’ home had strict rules like a boarding school. Skirts had to be a certain length, shorts could not be worn out in public, and they had a curfew of 10:30pm. Diana remembers the Home Sister ‘running around, trying to catch people coming in late at night’.
|audio_file_five=Diana_Grant-Mackie_Audio_05.mp3
|audio_description_six=A social life could be difficult because of the shift work and curfews, but there were social events and sports teams organised for the trainee nurses. There was some fraternisation between doctors and nurses. Diana recalls that the medical registrars used to have ‘beer parties’, but they were not her ‘cup of tea’. Whilst drinking was not common in the nurses’ home, Diana remarks that a lot of nurses smoked; it was the era of film stars like ‘Ava Gardener and her long cigarette holders’.

Through her involvement in political groups Diana met her future husband, Jack. They became engaged when she was in her second year of nurse training and she was the first student nurse to get married in Auckland. Nursing students were typically required to leave their training if they decided to get married, but Diana wrote a letter to the Nursing Council to ask permission to get married and carry on, a request which was granted.
|audio_file_six=Diana_Grant-Mackie_Audio_06.mp3
|audio_description_seven=In 1959 after becoming a registered nurse, Diana started training in maternity at Auckland’s National Women’s Hospital, which she enjoyed and ‘topped the class’. She left after three months to have her own children. During her time away from nursing, when she raised her two sons, Diana also joined the Māori Women’s Welfare League and became involved in political activist groups such as HART (Halt All Racist Tours) and CARE (Citizens Association for Facial Equality). She returned to nursing in 1976 as a district nurse at the Freeman’s Bay Clinic that was run by the St John’s Ambulance Association. The clinic provided free health care to the economically depressed area. As the district nurse she made school visits and referred sick children to the clinic. Rheumatic fever was a significant concern, so antibiotics were dispensed to treat sore throats to prevent the development of the disease. Working in the clinic, Diana developed new skills and also began to specialise in ears, nose and throat (ENT) nursing, gaining an ENT nursing certificate from the Auckland Area Health Board in 1987.
|audio_file_seven=Diana_Grant-Mackie_Audio_07.mp3
|audio_description_eight=Diana later moved to the Glen Innes Whare Rapuora Women’s Health Centre when the Freeman’s Bay Clinic was closed in 1989 by the Auckland Hospital Board. Her skills as an ENT nurse were especially useful in Glen Innes because ‘the children there had terrible ear problems’. Working with Māori families was central to the duties of the Glen Innes clinic. Diana was involved with local schools, the Pacifica centre at Western Springs and the Kohanga Reo in Orakei.
|audio_file_eight=Diana_Grant-Mackie_Audio_08.mp3
|audio_description_nine=During this time Diana also undertook a Bachelor of Arts majoring in Nursing Studies and Māori Studies, which she completed in 1992. She wrote her Masters’ thesis on cultural relationships and specialist nursing, and travelled overseas presenting papers on the socio-economic links to ear health. Diana reflects that she wants ‘nurses to see outside the lamplight… [to] see the surrounding society, it is as important to look after that, as it is to look after the individual patient’.
|audio_file_nine=Diana_Grant-Mackie_Audio_09.mp3
|audio_description_ten=
|audio_file_ten=
|menu=
|heading_one=Recording Details
|recorded=11 SEPTEMBER 2012
|interviewer=Margaret Horsburgh
|equipment=Fostex FR-2LE Digital Recorder
|abstractor=Margaret Horsburgh
|details=
|heading_two=Abstract
|media_description=This link will take you to the abstract summarising the full interview with Diana Grant-Mackie:
|media_image=Diana_Grant-Mackie_Abstract.docx
|media_image_caption=
|heading_three=Gallery
|gallery=Diana_Grant-Mackie_Photo.jpg
|heading_four=
|see_also=
|parent_category=Oral Histories
}}

Joan Tait

2025-05-20T04:47:04Z

NZNO:

TAIT, Joan Hellena (nee Wellington). Passed away peacefully on Sunday evening 1 May 2022.

{{Abstract V2
|banner_image=Joan_Tait.jpg
|banner_image_caption=Joan Tait
|audio_description_one=Born in 1931, Joan Hellena Tait (nee Wellington) grew up as one of six children on her family farm in Wharehuia, Taranaki. Her father was a farmer and her mother had been a midwife before she married. Joan describes having always wanted to be a nurse, influenced in a large part by her mother’s career, as well as her aunt who was a registered general nurse. As a young girl she read all the nursing books she could get her hands on, even her mother’s nursing notes.
|audio_file_one=Joan_Tait_audio_01.mp3
|audio_description_two=Joan began her nursing training at Hawera Hospital in 1951. On the wards a significant proportion of first-year students’ duties revolved around cleaning. This involved cleaning and sterilising equipment such as bedpans, bowls and tooth mugs, hand basins and toilets. Despite all the cleaning, there was some patient contact as well. There was always a list of patients to be sponged before preparing patients' breakfast and feeding those that needed to be fed. After morning tea the student assisted the middle duty nurse with patient pressure area care if the patient was bed ridden. In the afternoons those patients that weren't sponged in the morning had their turn. There were plenty of bedpans both morning and afternoon to be given out as no one was taken to the toilet. Responsibilities increased over time as nurses progressed through training. Second-year (middle) nurses, for example, would collect sputum and check for blood and would carry out diabetic urine tests.
|audio_file_two=Joan_Tait_audio_02.mp3
|audio_description_three=There were clear rules that dictated many aspects of nurses’ lives, particularly as students. Joan recounts that Christian names were not used except amongst good friends, otherwise they went by the title ‘nurse’. At the nurses’ home students had to be in before the doors were locked at 11pm. The rules around nursing hierarchy also influenced nurses’ behaviour. Junior nurses were expected to open the door for anyone senior and were required to remain standing in the dining room until the matron and the senior sisters had taken their seats. Joan describes some of the senior staff as having a ‘military type approach’ in their interaction with the nurse trainees.
|audio_file_three=Joan_Tait_audio_03.mp3
|audio_description_four=Joan recalls that the drugs available for treatment were very limited; penicillin was only just being introduced when she was completing her training. Blood transfusions were also quite new and blood reactions were common. She recounts that some of the common illnesses of the patients during her training included coronary diseases, whooping cough, poliomyelitis, typhoid, and tuberculosis. The nurses were at risk for contracting some of these diseases, in particular TB. Joan describes regular check-ups and x-rays that the nurses would have to monitor their condition.
|audio_file_four=Joan_Tait_audio_04.mp3
|audio_description_five=With her training completed in 1954 Joan carried on at Hawera Hospital as a staff nurse. In 1955 she began a six-month maternity training programme at Stratford Avon Maternity Hospital. Poliomyelitis was a significant concern in the mid-1950s. At the end of her maternity nurse training Joan contracted the disease but could not be admitted to hospital because it was so full of polio cases. She had to take three months off work to recover. When she returned to work, Joan describes being unable to perform some basic activities because her leg and arm muscles had been damaged. She was working at Wanganui Hospital and the Matron suggested that she undertake a divided duty which involved working 6am to 10am and 6pm to 10pm. This gave Joan the opportunity to have physiotherapy during the day and regain more mobility in her limbs.
|audio_file_five=Joan_Tait_audio_05.mp3
|audio_description_six=Joan worked as a staff nurse and sister until 1957 when she was given the role as tutor sister. She describes not being asked if she wanted the role but that there was a vacancy in the tutorial department and she was told to ‘report there on Monday morning’ by the Matron. Joan explains that she had ‘always liked teaching’ so was relatively pleased to be told of her change of position. She taught in the preliminary nurses’ school, teaching students skills such as ‘making beds ... getting them on to wards ... gradually allowed to teach how to take temperatures’. Joan worked as a tutor sister at both Hawera Hospital and Wanganui Hospital until 1960. Having married Jim that year, she took a break from nursing to have her children and move around the country for her husband’s work. In 1969, when her two children were in school, she returned to work as a community nurse tutor at Wanganui Hospital.
|audio_file_six=Joan_Tait_audio_06.mp3
|audio_description_seven=Joan went on to teach a return-to-nursing training programme. This involved teaching updated skills and techniques to nurses re-entering the workforce. She also recognised that some women wanted to be brought up to date with new methods and equipment so that they could be ‘out in the community’ helping rather than returning to work. Voluntarily, Joan initiated an evening course for retired nurses to learn new nursing practices so that they could assist in their communities.
|audio_file_seven=Joan_Tait_audio_07.mp3
|audio_description_eight=In the 1980s Joan took on a role as practice nurse and receptionist at a doctors’ clinic. During this time she also cared for her parents and father-in-law who had failing health. Joan maintained her practising certificate until 1988. Joan died in 2022.
|audio_file_eight=
|audio_description_nine=
|audio_file_nine=
|audio_description_ten=
|audio_file_ten=
|menu=
|heading_one=Recording Details
|recorded=20 NOV 2012
|interviewer=Margaret Horsburgh
|equipment=Fostex FR- 2LE Digital Recorder
|abstractor=Margaret Horsburgh
|details=
|heading_two=Abstract
|media_description=This link will take you to the abstract summarising the full interview with Joan Tait:
|media_image=JoanTait_Abstract.docx
|media_image_caption=
|heading_three=Gallery
|gallery=Joan_Tait.jpg
|heading_four=
|see_also=
|parent_category=Oral Histories
}}

Category:Military History

2025-05-20T04:40:10Z

NZNO:

On 23rd October, 1915, the troop ship ''SS Marquette'' was sunk.
https://ww100.govt.nz/no-ordinary-transport-the-sinking-of-the-marquette

The book co-written by Sherayl Kendall and David Corbett (1990), ''New Zealand Military Nursing: A History of the Royal New Zealand Nursing Corps, Boer War to the Present Day'' and the book written by Sherayl McNabb (2015), ''100 Years -- New Zealand Military Nursing: New Zealand Army Nursing Service -- Royal New Zealand Nursing Corps: 1915 - 2015'' may also be useful.

Links

2025-05-20T04:28:21Z

NZNO:

[http://www.nzno.org.nz/groups/nerf Nursing Education and Research Foundation (NERF)] 
[http://www.nzno.org.nz/ New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO)] 
[http://www.nursinghistory.org/ Museum of Nursing History (USA)] 
[http://www.fffaif.org.au/?page_id=14213/ Anzac Nurses of the Great War]

Links

2025-05-20T04:26:58Z

NZNO:

Staff

2018-09-28T02:39:40Z

NZNO:

Sue Gasquoine
Nursing policy adviser/researcher, New Zealand Nurses Organisation
Email: sue.gasquoine@nzno.org.nz

Project Group

2018-09-28T02:34:48Z

NZNO: /* Nursing Education and Research Foundation/New Zealand Nurses Organisation */

The following people have been instrumental in pulling together the content and creating the NERF Oral History Website:

==== Nursing Education and Research Foundation/New Zealand Nurses Organisation ====

 Sue Gasquoine

==== University of Auckland ====

Linda Bryder
Kate Prebble
Debbie Dunsford
Margaret Horsburgh


===== University of Auckland Summer Students =====


Emma Cotton
Kaitlin McLeod


==== University of Auckland Oral History Project Team and Advisory Group ====

[[File:oral history project group.jpg]]

Front row: Dr Debbie Dunsford (independent researcher and investigator on Oral History Project), Professor Linda Bryder (Department of History and investigator on Oral History Project), Dr Kate Prebble (senior lecturer School of Nursing and investigator on Oral History Project)

Behind Debbie (on left) Associate Professor Margaret Horsburgh (School of Nursing and investigator on Oral History Project)

Back row: Members of the Oral History Advisory Committee: Yvonne Shadbolt, Dr Jill Clendon (Nursing Policy Advisor, New Zealand Nurses Organisation), Liz Mitchelson