39. Services rendered

Key words/phrases: New Zealand, Dr. Sir Archibald McIndoe, East Grinstead Hospital Surrey, The Mayo Clinic Rochester, Minnesota, Dr. Sir Harold McGillies, St Bartholomew’s Hospital London, The Battle of Britain, The Guinea Pig Club, Neville and Elaine Blond, The Burns Unit Guy’s Hospital.

No. 39

It’s strange isn’t it how one thought coming into one’s mind can set off a whole chain of associated thoughts ?

A recent e-mail from a Charlotte Berry (née Dobbs) in New Zealand, who I trained with at Joyce Green, reminded me of another Registered Nurse friend of mine who trained in Dunedin, on the South Island of New Zealand.

Did you know that Dr Sir Archibald McIndoe, who went on to become the famous Burns & Plastic Surgeon of East Grinstead Hospital, Surrey, was also born in Dunedin ?

Archie McIndoe studied medicine at his local University, became a house surgeon at Waihato Hospital and from there he went to the Mayo Clinic, Minnesota, USA to study pathological anatomy on a scholarship.

In 1930 he moved to London and at the suggestion of his cousin Sir Harold Gillies (perhaps the world’s first renowned Plastic Surgeon) McIndoe took a job as a clinical assistant in the department of plastic surgery at St. Bartholomew's Hospital. Eventually he was appointed as the RAF's consultant in plastic surgery and after this he went on to win recognition for some the amazing surgery that he did on numerous pilots who were burned in plane accidents during the Battle of Britain.

He and the burns unit at East Grinstead Hospital became world famous. His plastic surgery patients automatically became members of the Guinea Pig Club – so called because so often they took part in “first time ever” surgical procedures.

Two good friends of McIndoe - Neville and Elaine Blond - assisted in developing local community help and support for the pilots so that they were not left feeling ostracised from those people whom they had served. The Blonds gradually persuaded various families in East Grinstead to accept the pilots into their homes as guests and visitors and this specialised unit was named the McIndoe-Blond Burns Unit in honour of these three people.

During my own career I particularly remember going as the ‘nurse escort’ from Joyce Green to the Burns Unit at Guy’s Hospital with a lad of 13 or 14 yrs who had sustained 80% burns. During the school holidays this young man had been helping his father to take up some lino that had been glued to a floor. The pair of them were using a glue solvent when the boy’s father unthinkingly threw a match on to the floor after lighting a cigarette, momentarily forgetting that the solvent that they were using was highly flammable.

The circumstances of the accident and the horrific state of the poor lad were made even worse by his fear of dying as he drifted in and out of semi-consciousness. “Am I going to die nurse ?” he repeatedly asked me as we made our way up to London by ambulance.

That question hit me really hard at the time. As young newly qualified nurses, what preparation had any of us ever received during our training that could possibly have prepared us to handle a question like that ?!

As you can perhaps imagine I have never been able to forget that that particular “shift” even though later on during my career I went on to manage a Regional Burns and Plastic Surgery Unit.

Managing that specialised unit was challenging enough in itself but in all honesty I take my hat off to all those people who actually work on the “shop floor” of Burns and Plastic Surgery units.