Liz Martin obituary

My sister Liz Martin, who has died aged 73, was a nurse at the Northern general hospital in Sheffield for 46 years, rising to be a ward sister there before her retirement. She trained at the Northern general as a state enrolled nurse, later moving up to state registered status there and died in the hospital’s palliative care unit after a long struggle with cancer. Liz was born in Newark-on-Trent, Nottinghamshire, to Pat Crowson, an office clerk for the gas board, and Rachel (nee Bowie). By the time she had started at Cardinal Hinsley school in Newark she knew she wanted to be a nurse. She joined St John Ambulance as a girl, and her ambition to move into a healthcare role was strengthened when she received an award for a brave but unsuccessful attempt to save the life of a child pulled unconscious from the River Trent. In 1969, aged 16, she began her training at the Northern general, where she lived in a nurses’ home under strict supervision and nightly curfews. In the 1990s she did a one-year conversion course to become a state registered nurse, which eventually led to her appointment as a ward sister in 2000 on a medical admissions ward – a high-turnover, high-stress environment i