Crawley nurse retires to swap ward rounds for seaside life

Sister Patti Sinnamon (back row, third from right) retiring from nursing at Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust. Pictured with her team in the theatre recovery area - picture submitted by Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust

Ever since she was a little girl Patti Sinnamon wanted to be a nurse.

She said: “I can remember when I was a young I used to run around the house with my first aid playset.”

Now after 43 years’ working in the NHS Patti is retiring and swapping her job at East Surrey Hospital for a life by the Sussex seaside.

Patti, from Langley Green in Crawley, did her training at the old Smallfield and Redhill General Hospitals, and began working at East Surrey when it first opened in 1983.

She said: “Things are much more hi-tech now. In the old days I can remember taking trolleys of Horlicks round the wards in the evenings.”

After starting her career as an intensive care nurse, Patti was promoted to sister and then moved into the hospital’s theatre recovery area in 2001.

Over the past three years she has seen the theatres enlarged and refurbished during a £15 million building programme.

The kind hearted nurse said: “I work with a great team in Recovery. Together we are the first face a patient sees when they come out of their surgery and they can often be feeling very scared. It is my colleagues and the people we look after who have made my work so special, in fact I’m still in touch with some people who were patients here 20 years ago.”

Patti is now busy planning her move closer to her family and the seaside and but won’t be putting her feet up just yet as she plans to do some voluntary work at a local hospice.