Marie Curie Nurse of the Year to go back in time for cancer care
Howard Lake | 23 September 2007 | News
Marie Curie Nurse of the Year, Dawn Dyne, usually cares for terminally ill patients in their own homes, but for one day she will return to her first ever job.
Dawn, 47, will take part in the charity’s fundraising initiative, Back to the Shop Floor. The event, which is sponsored by Persimmon Homes, asks people to return to their first job to make the choice to die at home a reality for more terminally ill people.
Dawn took her first steps into nursing in 1979 when she joined the Army. She began her training at the Duchess of Kent Military Hospital in Catterick Garrison, North Yorkshire, before moving on to British Military Hospital in Hong Kong and returning to the Duchess of Kent Military Hospital to complete her training in 1982.
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Dawn will carry out the ‘weekend cleaning’, another typical task for a trainee nurse, when she goes Back to the Shop Floor at the Friarage Hospital in Northallerton. She will clean the whole ward, change sheets and clean the bedpans and urinals.
Since 1982, Dawn has nursed patients in the Falkland Islands, Cyprus and Germany with the Army, worked for an agency in NHS hospitals and private hospitals, and worked in nursing homes around the UK.
She has nursed military personnel and civilians, and worked on intensive care, medical, maternity, surgical and orthopaedic wards.
But in 2003 she decided to join Marie Curie Cancer Care – and her focus returned to some of those core skills that she learned back in Catterick Garrison.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.