Caribbean health professionals were trailblazers, providing role models for the next generation of BME health workers. Starting from the early years, they progressed through the NHS into positions of enormous responsibility. Some achieved high-status positions.

Lena Hunt “worked at St Paul’s Hospital until I had my first child in 1956. For a short period I worked at a local health centre until we moved to the north east in 1966 where I worked at Darlington Memorial Hospital until we moved once again to Runcorn, Cheshire in 1979. I did ‘bank’ work in 2 or 3 hospitals in Chester,

but then I got a permanent part-time job at Halton General Hospital outpatients’ department, where I stayed until I retired in 1992. It was a very positive experience. Many times, like many others, I would say I was going to give it up and never be a nurse again, but I never did, and always came back to it somehow. With reference to the many nurses of different nationalities who staff our hospitals nowadays – it was ever thus. While I was in Harrow, I remember the nurses’ dining-room had small tables which seated four. There were hardly ever two nurses of the same nationality at any one table. There were nurses from Greece, Nigeria, Java, Ireland, Germany, Sierra Leone as well as the Caribbean. I never particularly wanted to be in management. I always wanted to do ‘hands-on’ nursing, which is what I did all my years. I was also able to do that and fit it in with family commitments. So it worked out quite well.”

Nola Ishmael first took up a staff nursing post and was later “encouraged to train as a health visitor”. After four years as a health visitor, “my boss came to me and said she wanted me to take over a bigger clinic … In 1987 I applied for the job of assistant director of nursing … I

Dr Nola Ishmael awarded first prize for efficiency in 1972 at Whittington Hospital