Cheryl Ward
My Mum, Cheryl Ward is the most caring, thoughtful and loved lady. She embodies everything it means to be a nurse. I don’t think she realises how truly wonderful she is.
I hope as you’re reading this mum, with your name in the Florence Nightingale Book of Honour, you reflect on what a difference you’ve made to so many children and their families lives. As I come to qualify as a registered nurse, I strive to be even half the nurse and women you are. Thank you for everything you have done for our family and inspiring me in every way.
1986-1988: Pupil Nurse Training, with placements in mental health, paediatrics and theatres. As soon as mum started her placement in paediatrics, she knew that’s what she wanted to do. She was offered a job on the paediatric surgical, orthopaedic ward as an enrolled nurse. Where her lifelong vocation began.
1991-1993: Completed Conversion course and qualified as a registered nurse, with a job on a bowel surgery ward.
1995: After 1 year in ITU, mum realised she thrived having patient and family interaction, so went back to work on the wards. On her first day back, she was offered a place on the children’s nursing course! In 1995, Mum earned her diploma in Children’s Nursing.
1998: Mum was offered a years secondment to position of senior staff nurse in a newly established team of nurses and nursery nurses; to care for a baby who needed 24hr ventilation via tracheostomy. This teams’ work and training meant the baby was able to be transferred from a very specialist hospital (far from home) to the family’s local hospital and then to home full time.
2000: With the capabilities of the team and the gap in service and need of local children, they set up the children’s community nursing team. Mum was key to this change and began full-time.
2001: Mum completed her community Nursing degree course, and the team progressed to caring for acute conditions, offering respite care and end of life care.
2003: Mum gave birth to twins: me and my brother Barney, where she very selflessly took a step back in her own career progression to give us both the absolute best start to life.
2008: Mum worked between the Emergency Department and East Anglian Children’s Hospice.
2012: Mum took a job in Neonates and successfully set up the local Neonatal Outreach team. In 2015 she completed her neonatal course.
2017 – 2023: Mum went back to work in the Emergency Department as a junior sister. Throughout Covid she worked tirelessly in what was considered the most dangerous area of the hospital, supporting her colleagues and friends whilst providing for her family.
2023: Mum took flexible retirement to enjoy lots of holidays as she deserved! But she’s not done yet, as I am writing this now, she is about to start a new job (in her 39th year of nursing) as Paediatric Diabetic Nurse specialist. I am so proud and wish her all the best.
Growing up we couldn’t go shopping without bumping into a family that knew my mum and spoke so highly of her as a nurse and person. Mum’s old colleagues have nothing but lovely things to say about her. I think this speaks for itself. Although she says ‘I’m so lucky to have such amazing friends’, anyone who has been fortunate enough to work with, or call my mum a friend, is truly the lucky one.
I love you so much mum. God bless, Ems xx
