My friend Rosemary Maguire, who has died aged 76, was the first specialist Parkinson’s nurse in the UK, and made a huge contribution to the lives of people living with Parkinson’s.
Rosemary was working as a geriatric liaison health visitor in her native Cornwall when in 1987 I asked her to carry out a survey of Parkinson’s patients who were attending my specialist clinic at Barncoose hospital in Redruth (now Camborne Redruth community hospital). She had already demonstrated great knowledge of the health- and social-care arrangements for people with Parkinson’s, and her research showed the enormous gaps in our knowledge – as well as the difficulties faced by people and their carers living with the condition.
With her evidence, I managed to persuade our management to employ her, for a trial period in 1989, to help fill these gaps. Such was the impact of her arrival as the UK’s first specialist Parkinson’s nurse that more appointments followed, and now almost 350 similar posts are established in Britain alone, with many more in other countries.
Rosemary provided an invaluable link between people with Parkinson’s, their carers, and other health professionals, who were often unaware of their patients’ special needs. For the first time she ensured that people with Parkinson’s had a ready source of information on drugs, other therapies and essential emotional support. She had a deep empathy for the patients and their carers, and was always available to troubleshoot.
Once firmly in post, Rosemary spread her knowledge and skills through the first English National Board course in the specialist care of people with Parkinson’s at the University of Plymouth, which continues to this day and has been extensively replicated elsewhere. She also became branch secretary of the mid-Cornwall Parkinson’s Disease Society (now Parkinson’s UK), a role she held into her retirement, working closely with local branches as well as the charity at a national level.
Rosemary was born in Camborne in Cornwall to Kathleen (nee Mitchell) and Jack Odgers. Kathleen was a housewife and Jack worked for the mining equipment manufacturer CompAir Holman in the town. After Camborne grammar school, Rosemary gained her nursing qualification at Truro City hospital in 1960 before training to be a midwife, first at Queen Mary’s hospital in Isleworth, Middlesex, where she met her future husband, Mike Maguire, and then at Bristol’s maternity unit. By 1963 she was back in Cornwall, working as a district nurse midwife in Bodmin and then Falmouth. She married Mike in 1969 and they moved to Dalton-in-Furness in Cumbria, where he worked as a fireman on nuclear submarines and she was a health visitor.
Eventually they returned to Cornwall, where Rosemary gave birth to their daughter, Claire, and took to being a full-time mother before returning to the NHS as a health visitor for elderly people, the job that led to her appointment as the first specialist Parkinson’s nurse.
She retired in 1999 and was appointed MBE in 2009 in recognition of her services to people with Parkinson’s. During her retirement years she undertook a barn conversion, in the process demonstrating great determination and a number of new-found practical skills.
She is survived by Mike, Claire and her grandchild, Logan.
