Flying nurse with an eye for adventure

Janet Dunkerley: restless

MARTYN MEETS... Janet Dunkerly
RESTLESS, impulsive, ambitious. At these descriptions Janet Dunkerley laughed uproariously yet denied only the middle adjective, which was plainly silly given our conversation of the previous 90 minutes.

Sitting before me, across the table in Costa Coffee as we sampled Oldham’s pavement culture – albeit indoors - was a driven woman. A lovely woman, with a charming smile, a ready laugh and a disarming way of making the altogether seriously different seem somewhat routine.

She managed to (almost) convince me that her time on a converted DC10 aircraft, flying into Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia to help carry out eye surgery and being escorted around oil-rich Nigeria by armed guards determined to see off would-be kidnappers as if it was no different to walking her fluffy haired, seven-month-old West Highland dog Louis. With its flashing collar.

This effervescent and bubbly 54-year-old grandmother now works full time as a nurse-adviser fee earner for the clinical negligence team at Pearson Hinchliffe Solicitors based at Queen Street, Oldham.

Her adventures abroad took off when she joined the USA-based Orbis — a group supported and funded by FedEx, who supply the volunteer pilots, Sir Richard Branson and a member of the British Royal family — to name but three of the charity’s supporters.

Born into a clearly caring and close family, in Hollingworth, Cheshire, Janet’s upbringing was hugely influenced by parents, Jennie and Ray.

“I wanted to be a secretary, just like mum,” she recalled, while wistfully remembering that her father, who worked for the ambulance service, tried to convince her that the health service was an altogether better calling.

On leaving school the 16-year-old took a job as an office junior in Dukinfield but two years later decided: “I don’t like this anymore.” So she quit — and enrolled on a two-year training course in nursing.

Based at the former Crumpsall Hospital, Janet threw herself into her new life and accepted a 12-month secondment at the Jewish hospital in neighbouring Cheetham Hill. “I lived in a flat with a friend, facing the synagogue.”

At the end of her training she decided: “I don’t like this anymore” and returned to her previous job in Dukinfield but soon grew restless again and joined Rupert Wood Solicitors in Ashton, widening her secretarial experience and gaining a smidgen of legal knowledge which was to influence her career choices later in life.

After three years guess what happened? Yep, she decided: “I don’t like this anymore.”

And she was off, to work as secretary to the orthopaedic consultant at Tameside Hospital, adding to her medical knowledge by accompanying her boss on his weekly outreach visits to Shirehill Hospital in Glossop, close to the family home.

She left to start a family but once Rebecca was born, Janet was soon back at work, working as a PA to a woman pioneering software for the education sector, widening her experience of life as the firm took on work for Granada , the BBC and The Open University. “They were exciting times . . . my boss was writing software that was truly groundbreaking around interactive screens.”

Guess what happened next? Yep, she decided: “I don’t like this anymore.”

And she was off to work as a scrub nurse at Highfield Hospital, Rochdale, where she stayed for five years, years that were hugely rewarding in a professional and career sense, taking on additional roles in training. Around this time, Janet took an 18-month course to become a State Registered Nurse.

And then she decided, yep, you’re ahead of me by now: “I don’t like this anymore.”

And so she left for a job at Royal Oldham Hospital and decided it would be good to became a midwife. But this was something that Janet most definitely didn’t like and at the completion of her course packed it in.

Around this time she was diagnosed with cervical cancer, sorted by surgery she told me, almost dismissively, and soon this determined, unrelenting woman was back on track.

So she went back to Highfield, began working with ophthalmic consultants and had her Eureka moment. “I just loved it . . . I had found my niche.”

She soon moved into a similar role back at Royal Oldham and, after five years during which time she became a ward sister, she spotted the advertisement for a head nurse with Orbis.

It was not so much a case of “I don’t like this anymore” more a case of “I might like this more” and after a 48-hour flying visit to New York for the interview she took up the role for the Flying Eye Hospital — a DC10 aeroplane converted to an operating theatre, laser room and recovery room, with seminar rooms attached, the only such aircraft in the world.

Her head office was in New York and the work took her to many parts of Africa, as well as Vietnam and China. She would spend time between tours of Africa in Dubai, helping restock the plane from its cargo base in Canada.

“They were exciting times, but exhausting.”

Tired and missing the company of he daughter and grandson Mason, she returned to the UK and found her true calling, interlacing her secretarial, legal and nursing skills in one fluid movement with the clinical negligence team at one of the Oldham’s largest legal firms, Pearson Hinchliffe.

Working in a multi-cultural and ethnically diverse borough such as Oldham, her one-to-one skills with clients are in demand.

Janet volunteers on the Action against Medical Accidents Helpline in Manchester, an independent charity which promotes better patient safety and justice for people who have been affected by a medical accident.

Far from the madding crowds of Africa and the Far East, Janet’s excitement these days comes from walking Louis and his flashing collar on edges of the playing fields near her Oldham home — and helping vulnerable women believe and understand they have solace and solutions close by.

Janet remains a driven woman, one who certainly knows her own mind, a woman of the world who has settled in Oldham, happily accepting she is a “cummer inner” but does not really care either way.

And nor should she, we should be happy to have her for Hollingworth’s loss is certainly Oldham’s gain.