“To donate your body and be a silent teacher is the biggest gift you could give to medical professionals” | Latest news

10 years ago, Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust (NUH) opened the National Repository Centre. Based at City Hospital, it is the only NHS body donation programme in the UK and supports members of the public who wish to donate their bodies to medical education, training and research.

National Repository Centre Senior Anatomy Technologist, Mark Curwood, said: “To donate your body is the biggest gift anyone could ever give to doctors and medical professionals to learn from. These donors are silent teachers.

“We are the only NHS body donation programme that provides tissue, body parts and whole bodies to licensed centres around the country.”

Leaving your body to the National Repository Centre after death understandably requires significant consideration and the centre is there to provide support and relevant information to help with the decision.

Former nurse, Ann Shawyer, who worked at City Hospital for 30 years, died of bowel cancer in January of this year and decided to donate her body to medical education and research and to continue to devote herself to medicine.

Ann’s husband, Alan Shawyer, has also signed up for body donation with the National Respiratory Centre and said: "Why would you not? Because it's a big help to everybody.

"I've had a lot of work done, I've had two replacement knees, two replacement shoulders. Where does the surgeon learn the skill to replace the knee and the shoulders? They've got to learn on a body.”

"I was obviously very sad after 56 years with Ann and I'm still extremely sad seven months down the track.

"But I'm very proud, so proud, that she did that."

Ann’s daughter, Abigail Shawyer, said: “It’s the silent teacher thing that gets me every time. I think she knew that’s what she was doing. She was teaching a lot of people after she died and that’s just amazing.”

In their tenth year the centre has now planted a memorial tree at Gedling Crematorium in Nottinghamshire. It was unveiled on Thursday 7 August 2025, to create a legacy for current and future donors and a place for donor families to visit, scatter ashes and reflect.

Steve Gill is the clinical lead at the National Repository Centre and as a Critical Care Consultant in Adult Critical Care at Queens Medical Centre (QMC) he knows how vital body donations are to medical education and research.

He said: “Each body will train tens of doctors. You can’t put a figure on that value because it will touch so many lives going forward.”

People can choose to donate their bodies to the National Repository Centre, based at City Hospital, by filling in a consent form.

Donors must fit a certain criterion - for example, they cannot have died of an infectious disease or have undergone a post-mortem examination.

They can also choose between a restriction of two years, or no time restriction, for the length of time their body can be retained.

The centre can also arrange a cremation and funeral, unless a donor wishes for private funeral arrangements to be made once their "donor journey" is complete.