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Maureen looks back on 46 years of x-ray vision
Sonographer Maureen Cunnington has said goodbye to her colleagues at Newmarket Community Hospital after 46 years of NHS service in west Suffolk.
Maureen, born in Barrow near Bury but now living in Fordham, left school at 18 to train as a student radiographer at the "old" West Suffolk Hospital in 1971. A pupil at Newmarket Secondary Modern school, she had achieved academic success and was advised to apply to join the Bury hospital pathology lab as a technician by her teachers.
"It's quite a story," says Maureen, looking back to the start of her long career. "I knocked on the door of the lab, and a gentleman came out. I explained why I was there, and he asked me where I was at school. When I told him, he replied 'we only take people from grammar schools'."
A rather shocked Maureen told him she had the right qualifications, but he would not budge. "Try x-ray", he said. Crestfallen, the teenager did as he suggested and tried her luck there. She had no appointment, but was welcomed by the team, who showed her round, leaving her impressed by all the machines. "It was like something from space," she remembers.
Maureen and one other student radiographer were the first to begin the two-year training scheme at the West Suffolk, spending three days a week "on the job" and two at the Ipswich School of Radiography at the Anglesea Road hospital.
Once qualified she stayed in Bury for a year before moving across to Newmarket in 1974, then a general hospital with 285 beds, a casualty department, operating theatres and nursing school. Maureen has been there ever since, working as a radiographer until the 1980s when she undertook further training at the Central Middlesex Hospital to become a sonographer.
This is the clinician who uses sound to see like a bat’s flight through darkness, and for the next decades of her NHS career Maureen did her work using ultrasound. Newmarket is now a community hospital, and the department remains busy, with GP and outpatient referrals. “Ultrasound has developed since I started,” says Maureen. “The images are much better - it’s like a new TV, you get new features all the time.”
Her work, she says, has been “one part along the journey in a person’s life. That’s the most rewarding part of the job. You can tell someone their longed-for baby is healthy; or find out what is wrong with someone and set them on the right path for treatment.
“Of course there are good and bad days but you feel you have made a difference in someone’s life.”
Maureen says she will miss her work and her colleagues but is looking forward to taking it easier, and going on long walks in north Norfolk with her dog. Her colleagues at Newmarket had a farewell “do” for her on 22 February. The Trust shares their good wishes for a long, healthy and happy retirement.
At her retirement reception, superintendent radiographer at Newmarket, Craig Wicksted, told Maureen: “Normally, when an employee leaves a place of employment, he or she is asked to hand in their ID badge, uniform and parking permit. In your case, I would like you to leave all of your knowledge, experience, and the huge respect you have gained for yourself and, in consequence, for the department.”
He continued: “This respect has come from your colleagues, the students who have learnt from you, and certainly from the referring clinicians, but most especially from the patients and expectant mums you have served so well.”
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