About Lorna
Former nurse at RIE
Lorna trained as a nurse in the hospital from 1965 to 1969. She completed the final year of her training – the Pelican year – in ward 20, which was located across the 4th floor of the building. The portrait is taken by one of the windows on level 4.
The second picture features shoes which Lorna got when she went to work with the British Army. They are very similar to the shoes she used to wear working at RIE, where she walked countless kilometres – including on the stairs on the western side of the building.
The Gestation of a Pelican in the 1960s
and some outcomes
(with apologies to zoologists)
On 6 September 1965 I stood hesitant on the doorstep of the PTS house in Chalmers Street. With hindsight I had lots in common with a ‘creepy crawly caterpillar’ with limited basic life skills. Just 6 weeks out of the 6th form of an all-girls’ private school I had no real understanding of life, nor did I comprehend my 18 year-old limitations.
I can look back on a learning curve as steep as any Alpine peak in the 3 years that followed. On that very first day an older student nurse helped me to arrange my uniform and for a few short weeks was my ‘minder’ when I set foot in my first ward, 29, a busy male medical facility. Other allocations followed, each with their own opportunity to learn: by mistakes, from tough ward sisters (and even tougher auxiliary and kitchen staff) but most of all from the patients. Nothing was easy, but despite it all the caterpillar began to crawl and eventually reached a chrysalis, as a brand newly qualified Registered Nurse setting out on a 4th year. I now learned how to be a fully fledged staff nurse once eligible for the coveted Pelican badge.
I moved away from the Royal, and even from the NHS. In doing so I discovered what as students we had been regularly told – that the world values ‘Pelicans’ and their nursing care of patients. My patients, and later my students once I became a tutor, included the multiethnic mix of inner London, the serving personnel of the British Army, eager East Africans – often bloodied by war, and a global set of distance learners regularly taught by phone when the internet was limited. In one meeting of senior nurses in London I chanced to mention my origins; a colleague said ‘so you’re a Pelican’ I always knew if I got a Pelican to do something it would be fully executed’.
Mine has been a rich and fulfilling career, all thanks to this dear old place: RIE.
Lorna Numbers RRC
Colonel, Ret’d.
