Tauranga nurse who worked during polio, TB honoured for International Year of Nurse

Margaret Pringle who is being honoured for International Year of the Nurse. Photo / George Novak

Being stuck on her back for six weeks with a broken pelvis was the best training Margaret Pringle could have to be a nurse.

"If people did your pressure care and didn't do it properly or they leave crumbs in your bed and you lie on your back and can't move," she said wincing her face.

"It taught me a lot about how to be a good nurse."

That was back in the late 1950s. Today the 85-year-old is humbled to be honoured by her aged-care provider Oceania Healthcare in celebration of International Year of the Nurse.

To mark the occasion, the healthcare village presented former nurses with a custom-designed commemorative pin for their immeasurable contribution to modern nursing.

However, Pringle believed nursing made an immeasurable contribution to her life.

As the eldest of five children, she was riding a horse six miles to catch a bus into town for school but found it too stressful while she was trying to help out at home.

"I was working on the farm with my dad, and he said to me when I was 19, 'now come on lass, it's time you thought about something to do with your life'.

"I thought I'd like to be a nurse but my mother said, 'you'll never be a nurse' so I went off and proved her wrong."

Margaret Pringle graduating in 1959, along with nurses, some of who she remains in contact with today. Photo / George Novak

Pringle started her training at Tauranga Hospital in 1954 and for the best part of her career, she was based there.

"Nursing enriched my life. It stood me in good stead for the rest of my life."

However, it didn't come without its challenges. While today we are faced with the Covid-19 pandemic, for Pringle it is not her first rodeo.

Separate wards for men, women, children and tuberculosis (TB) was how the hospital was run when Pringle started, she said.

"With New Zealand soldiers bringing home wives from Europe, it [TB] was quite prevalent then.

"Nursing in those days was so different from what it is now, I mean we nursed people with polio."

Pringle remembered the treatment offered to patients with polio and TB as if it were yesterday. It was at times confronting for a young woman, she admitted.

But her time in the nursing residence made up for all the lost fun. Living on-site, with a matron expecting you home at a certain time, made for many adventures creeping back through your bedroom window late at night, Pringle giggles.

"It was amazing because everybody became your family."

Pringle relinquished her work when she married. A few years later, after the breakdown of her marriage, she went back and noticed a big change.

"It was a totally different scene. In my day you boiled everything to sterilise them and if it had barbs you would sharpen it and reuse them.

"But when I went back, everything was thrown away. I couldn't believe the waste."

Even the uniforms were different, she said.

Pringle's original skirt that measured 14 inches off the ground had gone out the window with the dawn of the "mini-age", she said.

Oceania Healthcare general manager of nursing and clinical strategy, Dr Frances Hughes, believed every generation hoped to pave a better path for the next - and the nurses certainly did.

"They worked in incredible times and that resilience and experience has gone on to inspire and educate thousands and thousands of nurses, no matter how tough it was, they never gave up.

"We always celebrate what's happening today but we haven't celebrated our treasures, our taonga, as we should."

Hughes said she believed that without these women the profession of nursing may not have survived.

She said it was only fitting their work was recognised during 2020, which has been endorsed by the World Health Organisation as International Year of the Nurse.

Sutcliffe Jewellery was commissioned to design a silver pin featuring the symbol of The Oil Lamp in recognition of Florence Nightingale and the 200th anniversary of her birth.

Mastercraftsman Brent Sutcliffe, of Sutcliffe Jewellery, leapt at the chance to design and make the pins as he is married to a nurse, and has seen first-hand the extra mile nurses go day in, day out.

"I am honoured to be involved in this project to give back to our nurses and say thank you for their service," he said.