Many of those who wanted to work in the NHS applied directly to hospitals in the UK. Some responded to advertisements. Sherlene Rudder was one. She made her “own arrangements really because lots of my colleagues were going off to the States and London Transport. I wrote off to a hospital in Kent called Pembury. Somebody gave me a Nursing Times, I think, and I saw it there and wrote off and they said if I came I would be interviewed. I came over to the UK and lived with my parents who lived in Paddington, wrote off, did the exam and I was accepted.”

Elizabeth Yates did similarly but she had to take her exams in Guyana before being accepted. She worked as a geography teacher in Guyana for two terms in a secondary school but decided teaching “wasn’t for me! That was when I started exploring again what I was going to do. My uncle, who was a doctor, studied here [in the UK] and had brought back information about occupational therapy … That’s how I heard about occupational therapy. I wrote to the School of Occupational Therapists and they sent me a list of schools and then I wrote to a number. The London school which I eventually attended sent details asking if an invigilator could be found so I could sit the exam, which was a mixture of psychological testing and an essay … I did that and was successful and left to come to England to study.”

Dr Nola Ishmael at preliminary training school, Whittington hospital, 1969