My wife, Meg Turner, who has died aged 79, had a career in nursing, care of the elderly and carer training that spanned more than 30 years.
She started her training to become a state registered nurse in 1964, at the Tunbridge Wells School of Nursing, Kent. Meg then worked at the Royal Sussex County hospital in Brighton, and did midwifery training in Taunton, Somerset. She became a ward sister at Dorchester hospital (now the Dorset County hospital) in 1970.
Meg’s fund of ward stories provided entertainment for friends in later years. During one ward round that included the hospital almoner, who came from a county family, one of the patients struggled to her feet and curtsied. Even the consultant on the round was taken aback at this show of Dorset deference. Another patient, the writer and broadcaster Kenneth Allsop, corrected the English on his discharge form.
Born in Carlisle, the daughter of Clarisse (nee Moorhouse) and Jack Burgess, a decorator, Meg was brought up in the small village of Five Ashes in East Sussex and went to Heathfield secondary school before going on to train as a nurse.
Meg and I met at Dorchester hospital (I was working in the hospital kitchen before college) and we married in 1971. We moved to south-west Wales in 1978, where I lectured at Pembrokeshire College in Haverfordwest; with two children, Meg returned to part-time nursing in 1980, at a care of the elderly ward at Withybush hospital, and after a few years left to become matron of a residential home at Langton Hall, Fishguard. From there she gained a teaching certificate and became a trainer of care workers, lecturing at Pembrokeshire College and at training organisations such as Rathbone Community Industry.
After her retirement in 1999, she become increasingly immobile, but this did not stop her from joining the local Women’s Institute and University of the Third Age. Her love of poetry, shared with countless friends, along with craft, crosswords and word games was maintained almost until the very end. She was bedbound with arthritis for her last three years.
Meg is survived by me, our daughter, Saffrwn, and son, Edryd, and our grandchildren, Briallu, Eilir, Gwenllian and Delun.
