An advanced nurse practitioner is just embarking on her 45th year in the profession.
Pauline Brown was one of the country’s first advanced nurse practitioners when she qualified in 1999, having started her medical career in 1974.
Working at Castle Douglas Medical Group, she is a well-known face throughout the Stewartry where she has been based for the past 36 years.
And she admitted she was embarrassed when her work was recently highlighted and praised by Councillor Pauline Drysdale on her Facebook page.
Mrs Brown, who is 62, said: “I was so touched but said there will be lots of people more deserving of recognition. There’s no I in team and it’s definitely a team here.
“It was lovely. These are the multi-generational folk I have been involved with and I’d like to say thank you to them as it is a real privilege to have been involved in the lives of many Stewartry families, cradle to grave.
“I’m honoured to be part of a fantastic team. My family have been extremely supportive of me and I’m extremely grateful to my colleagues over the past 44 years, in particular to the Castle Douglas Medical Group team including the GP partners, my nursing team colleagues, the admin team and all of the attached staff and professionals allied to medicine, including the voluntary sector.”
She began as a district nurse and midwife in the Portpatrick area after training in Glasgow in 1974. She was later based in Dalbeattie after moving to the Stewartry with husband Robert, who is retired from his role as deputy rector at Kirkcudbright Academy.
After doing that job for 25 years, fitting in three children along the way, the NHS divided the role of health visitor and midwife. That was when she saw an advert in the Galloway News for the advanced nurse practitioner degree at Lancaster University.
“Both GP practices were very supportive,” she said. “So that was how I started, then I realised I had to be in the surgery to gain experienced exposure to clinical skills. One of the GPs was retiring and they offered me a job.
“It has grown and grown and I just feel so fortunate. It is the last bit of the jigsaw for me, it’s taking nursing that one step further but you’re still working from the nursing model, merging with medicine but always knowing my boundaries.
“Patients have the choice of seeing myself or a GP and I think they like having the choice. I go out to house calls and I’m particularly interested in teenage health and women’s health, palliative care. We’re also a training practice.
“The autonomy has grown. At the beginning, I wrote to the medical director asking if secondary care would accept my direct ANP referrals, thus increasing autonomy and making it a smoother patient journey and help give the GPs more time for more complex patients.
“Prevention is still a huge thing for me and, as laughter is the best medicine, we have humour within the team.
“I am involved in speaking to the pharmacists who are training to work within GP practices about how the ANP role dovetails with theirs.
“I enjoy networking with my colleagues at local and national level and especially all the other nurse specialists at the infirmary, secondary care and primary care.
