At the start of Joyce Pennington's nursing career she faced a flu epidemic - and now, 50 years later, she's preparing to retire during the Covid pandemic.
For Joyce, who was just 16 when she began work as a cadet nurse at St Nicholas' Hospital in 1971, much has changed in the NHS in her half-century-long stint - not least as she's played a key role in making psychiatric services more inclusive for the Deaf community.
But both at the very beginning of her service facing the flu, and at the very end with the complications of Covid-19, mask-wearing has been the norm for her at work.
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Reflecting on her career, Joyce, 66, said: "I left school at 15 and didn’t know what to do. My mother was a nurse at St Nick’s and she suggested I become a cadet nurse. I still remember my first day really well: everyone was so friendly, and it was like being part of a big family."
During the early part of her career, when working as a ward sister at St Nick's, on a night shift Joyce was dismayed when she was unable to communicate with a deaf person on the ward. Inspired by this, she decided to learn how to use British Sign Language.
"I'd never met a deaf person before or had seen anyone use sign language,” Joyce explained. "While I was doing the course I began to wonder where deaf people with mental health issues go for help. I tried to do some research, there was no internet in those days, and I had to go to the library. I telephoned people, wrote letters, but had very little response."
After her research, Joyce realised that the closest mental health services for deaf people were hundreds of miles away in Manchester.
"I just thought this was so unfair that deaf people should have to travel a 300-mile round trip to see a doctor who could understand them and knew about deafness and deaf culture," she said.
So she decided to set up a service for deaf people in the region - something she began by "gate-crashing a lot of consultant and GP meetings" and eventually she met staff from the National Centre for Mental Health and Deafness in Manchester.
In 1997, with their help, she began working two days a week as a community psychiatric nurse helping the North East's deaf community - and this soon expanded to be her entire job. Since then, Joyce's work has been recognised around the world.
In 2010, she took part in a lecture tour of Australia where she met with health professionals there to talk about making services more inclusive - while in 2018 she was awarded Chair's NHS 70th Award - but the CNTW Trust. On the back of this, she even attended the celebratory Buckingham Palace garden party for the NHS birthday a year later.
She said she was exceptionally proud of the work she has achieved over the years, adding: "We are a very small regional tertiary service covering two large mental health trusts, CNTW and Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust (TEWV).
"It is the only stand-alone community-based mental health service for Deaf people in England who have a consultant psychiatrist working with them. There are so few services in the country, even now, so it’s such an enormous achievement.
"Part of our role is to remove barriers for Deaf people accessing services and educate other services on how to communicate and work with deaf people. I hope the team is able to grow further to include staff from other disciplines."
Now, in retirement, Joyce hopes to travel in Spain and look after her grandchildren.
