Operational Matron
Addenbrookes Hospital

Claire T

00:00:01 My name’s Claire T and I’m an Operational Matron. Day to day means I assist with the flow of patients throughout the hospital, making sure that everybody gets a bed in a timely fashion. In this job, on the days when I am carrying the pager for the Trust I’m responsible for the whole building. All the patients, all the staff, everything comes through me first. It is a huge job, but it’s fantastic, I love it.

00:00:29 The most exciting things probably about the job are the emergency situations we get called to, the excitement of being in the A & E Department, seeing patients come through, never knowing what’s going to happen next. It can be very tiring, we do do long shifts. We do either ten hour or twelve hour shifts. And so they are very, very long days. But obviously we do get the days off afterwards as well.

00:00:55 This current job I’ve been doing for two and a half years. Before this job I was a nurse specialist in blood transfusion, training nurses and doctors how to administer blood and blood products safely. So not just blood transfusions but all of the plasma, within either emergency situations, road traffic accidents within A & E, or in surgery.

00:00:19 I’ve known from a very young age that I wanted to be a nurse, from a very young age. I was probably about five or six with my nurse’s uniform. How far I was ever going to progress in that I didn’t know, but as the years have gone by I know now that this is the kind of job that I was aiming for, yeah. My father works, or worked, within the hospital – he’s now retired – so I spent many of my formative years within the hospital environment, so I felt quite comfortable in that environment, I’d always, you know, wanted to work in the hospital where my Dad worked, so I have achieved that at least.

00:00:54 I left school with very very few qualifications, certainly not enough to get into the nursing school that I wanted to get into, so became an unqualified nurse, a health care assistant, and worked for a year or so doing that job. I was then actively encouraged by all of the staff on the ward to become a trained nurse, and I took the hospital entrance exam. And that’s how I got in to do my nurse training.

00:02:23 I certainly think starting off with no qualifications has spurred me on, and the fact that I do now have my degree, I’m exceptionally proud of myself that I have achieved from nothing going through to being a very senior nurse with a degree, when I think probably people had given up all hope of me ever getting into nursing.

00:02:45 I think the driving factor for me in my job is – is helping other people. And I want to make sure that the care I’m giving to other people would be what I would expect to receive, and what my family would expect to receive, and I think that’s what motivates me now, in the position I am in.

00:03:04 The person who has influenced me most is a very good friend of mine who was a junior nurse on the ward where I very first started, way back twenty, twenty-one years ago now, who has encouraged me the whole way, and made me believe in myself, that I could actually do the job. Prior to coming into nursing I was probably a fairly nervous person, not sure where I was going with my life, but she made me believe that I can make a difference, and I can look after those patients.

00:03:36 In five or ten years’ time I would probably like to think that I could have moved further into nursing management, and certainly possibly within the next five years to be Manager of the team that I’m in at the moment.

00:03:52 I’m very happy with where I am now, and yes it was a struggle to get where I am now, but I think I appreciate it more because I have struggled, and I have had to fight my way through, and I’ve had to work very hard to get to where I am.

00:04:06 ENDS