Radiographer celebrates 50th anniversary
Central Middlesex Hospital’s ambulatory care and diagnostic centre (ACAD) celebrates its 20th anniversary next week. We’re taking a look at some of the staff past and present who've helped shape the hospital.
One of the UK’s longest serving radiographers has celebrated her 50th work anniversary.
Bozenna Wereszczynska began working as a radiographer at Central Middlesex Hospital in 1969.
It was the year of Woodstock, the Vietnam War and Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the Moon.
The hospital - a former Victorian workhouse which was demolished and rebuilt in 2008 - had an international reputation and was home for a number of pioneering doctors.
Horace Joules was the driving force behind the introduction of the Clean Air Act; Richard Doll proved the link between smoking and cancer; and Francis Avery Jones was recognised as the ‘father of gastroenterology.’
Some were as eccentric as they were brilliant, such as Dr Richard Asher whose medical papers included The Dangers of Going to Bed, The Seven Sins of Medicine and Why are Medical Journals so Dull?
Bozenna plumbed for radiography after a visiting radiographer gave a talk at her convent school.
The dominant feature of Central Middlesex was a half-mile long corridor that ran from one end of the hospital to the other.
Bozenna, 71, said: “The radiography department was at one end and theatres at the other so we rushed up and down it all day taking x-ray cassettes to be processed in the darkroom.
“We’d then head back to theatres with the developed film dripping down the corridor.
“It was a bit like Doctor in the House - a popular TV show in the 70s - with doctors in long white coats and nurses wearing butterfly caps but the camaraderie was fantastic. It felt like one big family.
“We had five radiographers at the time compared to an eighty strong workforce across the trust today but the service has grown beyond recognition since those days in terms of technology and sub-specialities."
A few oddities have shown up on her x-rays over the years Including coins, a bar of soap, pens, a giant tapeworm and sachets of heroin swallowed by a drug mule.
Does the UK’s longest serving radiographer have any plans to retire?
“It would be nice but I own six horses with my partner. They are my children and, like children, you want the best for them.”