Oral history interview with Yvonne Douglas

Index:

00:00 Introduction

00.51 Describes a happy childhood, and having 14 siblings

01.56 Attended a few schools in Guyana, and had difficulties in one

03.02 Her father learned his trade as an arc welder in Guyana and came to the UK to work in 1960

05.21 Speaks about her aunts who already worked in the England as nurses

05.49 Says she didn’t know what she wanted to do as a profession

06.57 Describes the environment in Guyana that she liked

09.55 Says she like being taught history in school but that never included anything of the peoples heritage

12.12 Speaks on heritage and family make up

14.24 Came to the England because her family members were already here

15.42 Describes her first impressions of the England as being cold – so cold that she cried

20.24 Talks about her first job making handbags and her encounters with pie and chips

24.22 Speaks on being told to do nursing by her aunt and the steps to becoming a nurse

28.03 Says there were many other people who came from Africa and the Caribbean and that some of them were headhunted from the Caribbean

30.01 Speaks on how she was treated by the other women of the diaspora and talks about “living in” the student nurse accommodation

34.03 Describes the nurses cooking their own cultural foods

36.06 Talks about how racism existed on the wards but it was mainly from the elderly patients and war veterans

39.49 She nursed until 2011 and enjoyed it, also describes nursing in general and the ward managers

35.17 Gained employment in a community nursing role

42.41 Speaks on her preference to ward managers over the old style wards sisters and her reasons why

45.37 Gives her thoughts on the NHS and how she was able to further her career through study and experience

54.46 Talks about the various hospitals she had worked in and gaining more responsibility