Half-century of serving others

FAMILIAR ROLE: Registered nurse Gobbie Miles at the nurses’ station in Life St George’s Hospital’s ICU yesterday. Picture: EUGENE COETZEE

Retiring nursing stalwart has just about seen it all

WHEN registered nurse Gobbie Miles, 68, started nursing, patients were still smoking in their beds and even had ashtrays on their side tables.

“One of my most vivid memories was of this man, Mr Rose,” she said.

“He had a double amputation because of gangrene and was on oxygen because of problems with his lungs.

“He was in the intensive care unit. Suddenly I smelled cigarette smoke and there he was, with a cigarette hanging out of the side of his oxygen mask.

“‘Just give me that cigarette before you set the whole world on fire’, I said to him,” she said, laughing.

Next week Miles, one of the founding members of the first intensive care unit at Provincial Hospital as well as one of the first nurses to work on an advanced life support ambulance, will retire from Life St George’s Hospital.

Impeccable in her dark-blue uniform and steel-rimmed glasses, Miles – who was also a teacher and an ICU nurse – was humble about her long service to the Port Elizabeth community.

“The other day they had a party for me here at the hospital. They told me I must give a lecture and I spent hours on it,” she said.

Miles, who grew up in Molteno, said she had come to Port Elizabeth for the first time a day or two before she was due to start her training at Sharley Cribb Nursing College in 1966.