A team of former nurses reunited at the weekend to commemorate 60 years of careers and friendship.
Nearly 20 women who trained for their nursing careers at at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary in 1959 attended the event at the Marcliffe Hotel and Spa on Saturday.
Mickey Ramsay, 78, said the group get together every year – with the 60th anniversary attracting friends from as far as Dingwall and Oxford.
Mrs Ramsay, from Drumoak, started her training with the other women on November 2, 1959 and spoke about the different changes the group experienced through the years.
She said: “It was really nice that we were able to get together on November 2 – on the exact day 60 years ago.
“Every year we always say this might be the last time we get to see each other, but we always say that.
“We were quite disciplined back then and very respectful of authority.
“I remember we didn’t have anything sterilised in bags, like how we have them now.
“We had to wash everything and then send it off to be sterilised – we even had to wash the metal bedpans by hand.
“For our cotton balls, we had to make them ourselves and put them on the radiators to fluff them up.
“There was a lot of cleaning too, once a week we had to thoroughly dust behind the beds and we didn’t question it.
“When I think about it, it taught us a lot about cross-infection.”
However, Mrs Ramsay said the nursing staff also had their share of fun.
“We got up to naughty things too, sometimes the nurses would take sterilised labels and stick them on the back of the young doctors’ coats.
“We had fun most of the time and we became very close,” she said.
Mrs Ramsay, who specialised as a midwife, said the reunion was filled with conversation and reminiscing over old photographs.
She added: “There’s always a lot of chat when nurses get together – I think, nurses on a whole, are very happy to chat because we’re always meeting people from different walks of life.
“That’s why I went into nursing, because I knew I wanted to work with people.”
