ONE OF the best known persons in the Manchester's medical scene made a trip to the place of her birth on November 4.
Irish-born Sr Sheila, pictured here, runs the out-patients department at the BUPA Hospital, Whalley Range. She is the only nun still nursing in the hospital which is built on the site .of the former St Joseph's Private Nursing Home.
Accompanied by hospital matron, Pam Bower, she made a special visit to Dublin for a reception at BUPA's new Blackrock Clinic. The clinic which opened this year is the, newest of BUPA's twelve hospitals to be built, where as BUPA Manchester was the first.
St Joseph's hospital was run Since the 1930's by the Sisters of St Joseph's of the Apparition and was purchased from them by BUPA Hospitals.
Many of the former staff at St Joseph's, including several nuns, continued to nurse at the new BUPA hospital, when it opened in 1981. The other sisters have now retired, leaving Sr Sheila as the last representative of this popular nursing order in Manchester.
Sr Sheila trained at the Mater Hospital, Dublin, and following a short spell at a nursing home in Sligo, was moved by her order to England, to continue her nursing career. She has been nursing patients in Manchester for the past 40. years.