Janet Basso

Joined 1985

Malden and Coombe Nursing Cadet Division, London

Listen to this interview:
Colour photograph of a female Cadet in black and white uniform cutting into a cake, with her hand resting on her certificate
Janet Basso celebrating achieving 1000 duty hours, 1994 Image courtesy of Janet Basso
Read transcript +

Transcript

Yeah, definitely. I think the skills and the experience that it gave me, I think are still things that I use now. I mean actually, you know, it’s become a bit of a joke in our house about the fact that, you know, and obviously there’s that sort of motherly instinct and all of that. But the fact that I’m the, you know, the person that the kids come to if they graze their knee or whatever, you know, no matter what, the fact that, you know, that grounding, and yes, the technicalities of the First Aid book may have changed. But that kind of grounding of actually knowing what to look for, for whether it’s a head injury or, you know, which kids do all the time, or whether it’s broken bones or whatever, has – yeah, has stood me in a really, really good stead with minor injuries around the household. And that training to just stay calm and deal with it. I mean my husband completely freaks out if he – at the sight of blood and, you know, no matter how minor. And just that ability to just calmly get on with it and kind of go, right, okay, we need to stop the bleeding, we need to, you know, and then make sure it’s clean, da-da-da-da-da, and just go through that, yeah, I mean all the time. But then yeah, the, er, other than that, knowing some of the other things, the other skills that I’ve picked up. And, you know, I think I mentioned earlier about the, um, you know, I sort of talked about caring for the sick part of it and the fact that yeah, we definitely – it wasn’t ever billed as you might need to do this at some point in your life. But, you know, you sometimes do. And there have been times when that element of being in a hospital environment and it not being totally unfamiliar as far as what things are and what they’re for. And having an idea of how you might be able to help make someone comfortable and things like that, yeah, actually have been useful real-life things.

Excerpt courtesy of Janet Basso