Nottingham Children’s hospital nurse works her final shift after 50 years’ service. | Latest news

Kim Helm, Children's Hospital Senior Nurse at Queen’s Medical Centre (QMC), has just worked her last shift and is retiring after 50 years of nurse training and service at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust (NUH).

Kim always knew she wanted to be a nurse and remembers as a schoolgirl, walking past the QMC site when the hospital was still being built, saying to her Mum; “I am going to work there one day.”

When her school careers adviser presented her with a list of potential careers that didn’t have nursing on, she said: “I want to be a nurse.” When he asked what she would do if she couldn't be a nurse, Kim’s reply was, “I want to be a nurse.”

Kim’s mum took her along to the hospital careers office near the castle, in Nottingham, on Friar Lane and that's how she got on the pre-nursing course in 1976, at the tender age of “sweet 16”, Kim remembered fondly.

At 18, Kim joined the school of nursing at QMC. This was 1978 when, although QMC had been officially opened as a hospital, there were only a few wards and most of it was still the medical school and school of nursing.

Kim finally qualified in 1982, and her last placement was on Nightingale 2 at City hospital which was a renal ward. Little did she know she would end up working in renal for 44 years until retirement. She started out in adults renal care and did her renal specialist nurse training during that time. But a move to paediatrics was about to happen.

Kim remembered: “There were rumours that there was a doctor coming from Canada to set up a children's renal unit and he poached four of us.

“Professor Alan Watson said to us, ‘I'm not worried that you're not Children's trained, you're renal trained and I need you’.”

Kim said: “If it wasn't for him, I wouldn't have been a paediatric nurse for the past 41 years. I just think it was fate.”

On her last day at work, Kim shared that she had been overwhelmed with kind messages from many families she has supported over the decades. She had just spoken with a mum whose daughter had grown from a toddler who panicked about having to come to hospital just for blood tests, but she got a transplant and has grown into a confident young woman who excelled at the transplant games.

Kim said: “A story like that is the best advert for transplantation. I've always loved renal. I think it's because it's a mixture of medical and surgical.

“The patient is on a journey, and we are on it with them from start to finish. We never cure our kids. The best outcome is getting a transplant and seeing a child flourish into a young adult.”

Kim isn’t just a renal nurse, she also supports the children on their residentials which happen during  the summer, and she is the transplant games manager and has been for over 10 years. She explained: “On the residentials, and at the transplant games, the children are with young people the same as them.

“They're not with their friends from school who don't know how they feel. They're with young people who’ve been through it, and they make friends for life.”

Kim has also made friends for life through her nursing career. One of her best friends is a woman she me on her pre-nursing course and they have remained friends for 50 years.

Emotional about retiring and no longer coming ito work with the fantastic renal team at QMC, Kim said: “I think we've got great camaraderie. You know, we've laughed, we've cried, and sometimes if you didn't laugh, you would cry even more.

“The patients and families say that we are their second family, but my colleagues are my second family. I even met my husband, Mick, when I started out in renal at City in 1982, he was a pharmacist on my ward and we married in 1985.

“The renal team have been there for me throughout lots of things personally and I've had great support from everybody.”

In recognition of Kim’s long service at NUH, Director of Nursing, Rachel Boardman presented Kim with a certificate and a £100 voucher as a thank you for: “The huge contribution you’ve made and what you’ve meant to those patients and families.”

Shelley Jepson, Lead Nurse for the Children's Renal Service explained more about that huge contribution: “Kim embodies, for me, what a specialist nurse does. It’s that absolute compassion. She understands the needs of that child and the whole family.

“She goes the extra mile, whether it's organising accommodation; or transfers; or sorting out the medication at the last minute on a Friday because they’ve run out; or just reassuring them.

“Kim will just do it. She'll just do everything to make sure that those children and their family’s life is as easy as possible.

“She's going to be a huge loss.”

Kim’s first day of retirement will be spent flying off to Ibiza with her family and grandson for the first time for a well-earned holiday. We wish Kim a happy and healthy retirement.