A "ROLE-MODEL" nurse who came to the UK as a child and worked in the NHS for more than 40 years has retired.
Surjit Kaur Dard began her career as a cadet nurse at the age of 17, despite her parents wanting her to take an office job instead.
She said she was attracted to the profession not only by a desire to help people – but also because her favourite television programme at the time was ITV soap opera Emergency Ward 10.
The 61-year-old said: "I liked the uniforms the nurses wore. But I just wanted to do something where I got to care for people, which is why I was determined to start my training so early."
Having arrived in Derby from the Punjab at the age of six, she and her family set up home in Strutt Street.
Once she qualified as a nurse at 18, Mrs Dard said her language skills were also called upon and she was asked to translate for many of the first-generation Punjabis who emigrated to the UK.
For most of her 43 years working for the NHS, Mrs Dard, of Grampian Way, Stenson Fields, worked with radiographers in the X-ray department at the Derbyshire Royal Infirmary and then at the Royal Derby Hospital.
She said: "What was so interesting about it was that technology was ever-evolving. Your brain was always on the go because of how fast things moved.
"When I started in the job, there was not so much intervention work where you were able to spot the signs of, for example, disease growing. Now it is the nurses who do most of that type of work."
Penny Owens, general manager at Derby's hospitals imaging department, said: "The overriding impression I have of Surjit is her kind, caring and considerate personality.
"She is a role model and her excellent standards have benefited generations of student nurses. She always has a smile for everyone."
Mrs Dard married her husband Tarlochan Singh Dard, 62, in 1977. They have three children – daughters Kamaljit Kur Banwait, 35, and Perminder Jeet Banwait, 30, and a son, Gursher Dard, 26.
She said: "I have enjoyed my career in nursing so much and, if I had to sum it up, I would say there has never been a dull moment and it was never a chore."
Her retirement party, at the Hallmark Hotel, in Derby, saw more than 70 past and present colleagues join family members to show appreciation.
