Nurse bids a fond farewell after 45 years (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)

Nurse bids a fond farewell after 45 years

Salisbury District Hospital chairman David Noble says goodbye to clinical nurse specialist and lecturer Jan Sanders at her farewell party. DA5240Lesley Bates meets a woman with a suitcase packed full of surprises...

JAN Sanders has left many a customs official perplexed. Just recently, one complained that the luggage she was taking to Romania was well over the weight limit.

The heavy package tipping the scales must be left behind in Britain, he said, and collected on her return in two weeks.

But I can't leave it behind, she explained, it contains 80,000 condoms.

"He looked at me and obviously thought - 80,000 condoms in two weeks!" she laughs.

In the end, the condoms were let through.

It's the sort of consignment Jan takes with her whenever she visits Romania, along with contraceptive coils and coffee.

All are in short supply in a country where the poverty levels are such that access to contraception - and coffee - are virtually non-existent in some areas.

Until her retirement last Wednesday, Jan (64) was a clinical nurse specialist at Salisbury District Hospital, specialising in contraception and sexual health matters, and for the last seven years, she has been making annual visits to Romania, where she works with a charity called Share.

"It's made me so much less materialistic - I travel in a horse and cart to get to some of the villages," she says.

"When you see the lives people lead - they are so poor yet so uncomplaining, but they welcomed me into their homes and were so generous.

"Their belief in an English nurse is humbling.

"Food is scarce, health care is terrible - I've seen women who've had 20 abortions by way of contraception."

Share is a small Christian charity that operates a health and social programme in villages around the small town of Sibiu in the mountains northwest of Bucharest.

Here in Britain, Jan has raised more than £20,000 to support its work.

"You can only do so much in two weeks, but the money you raise helps to continue the care all year round," she says.

People in Salisbury have been incredibly supportive of her fund-raising efforts, and donations mount up from talks she gives to different groups.

She has a wealth of hilarious and eye-watering stories garnered from 45 years in the profession, which she tells with practised ease and the delivery of a professional comedian.

I tell her she should write a book and she jokes that most of her stories are unprintable.

Certainly I couldn't possibly reveal here the nature of the particular props she takes regularly to demonstrations and which set off airport alarm bells because they look like lethal weapons on x-ray scanners.

In 1996, she was Wiltshire Women of the Year for her work in the community.

"I talk to so many different groups," she says.

"It's not just women's groups and teenagers - sexuality affects the elderly as well as drug takers, people with physical or learning disabilities or spinal injuries - it runs all through life."

She has seen remarkable changes in nursing since she qualified as a SRN in 1961 and says the standards of care drilled into her then have never left her.

"My first ward sister terrified me, but she taught me so much and I do miss matron - she was formidable but caring, knew everybody in the hospital and her nurses particularly well."

Jan herself became the youngest ward sister her London hospital had ever had in 1964, but in 1965 she married the young man she had met in Salisbury and moved to Wiltshire.

She taught at Salisbury School of Nursing before her two sons were born and worked part time while they were growing up.

In 1987, she was appointed clinical nurse specialist for contraception and sexual health service, but all that came to an end last week.

Now she is looking forward to travelling and walking, seeing more of her friends, joining U3A, planning another trip to Sibiu and she's been asked to continue teaching part time.

"I have loved every minute of nursing," she says warmly.

"I adored being a ward sister and I loved teaching.

"I'm amazingly privileged to have had a wonderful career and be in a profession where you feel you've made a difference."