| Rita Beattie |
 Born in 1943, Rita Beattie left school without ‘O’ levels and spent three years working as a secretary before undertaking
nurse training at the Royal Victoria Hospital in her home town of Belfast. She then completed midwifery and psychiatric training
in Edinburgh before going to London where she undertook her District Nurse Training and worked as a District Nurse for a number
of years in Kensington and Chelsea. Her original reason for going to London was to possibly work with Drug Addicts and ended
up working in a Christian Rehabilitation Centre in Gloucestershire for two years in the early 1970s. Rita returned to London
and worked in the Harley Street Clinic for five years and during that period met many patients from the Arab States desperately
seeking curative treatment for terminal conditions. She felt very frustrated that patients symptoms were not controlled effectively,
so recalled a visit she had made to St Christopher’s Hospice during her District Nurse training and started to attend Study
Days of her own volition to learn how she could offer more effective care. In 1979 she decided to take a year out to reconsider
her future and went to work in New Zealand. She returned to Northern Ireland in 1980, despite reservations about the insularity
of life there. It was while seeking a position and attending interviews that she met a Senior Nursing Office who mentioned
that a Hospice was being planned and that Rita should consider applying for the position when it was advertised. In the meantime,
Rita worked as a Community Psychiatric Nurse and when the post of Nursing Director was advertised she applied and took up
her post in 1984. The interview describes the inpatient, day care and home nursing functions of the Northern Ireland Hospice,
as well as the re-education of staff who emerged from a predominantly hospital background. Also discussed are the reactions
of the local community, relationships with other hospice units in the province in the light of Northern Ireland’s troubled
religious and political history, and links with the Northern Ireland Office. Rita Beattie has maintained contact with developments
elsewhere in Britain through the National Council for Hospice and Specialist Palliative Care Services, and particularly compares
the differing relationships between health and social services on the mainland and in Northern Ireland, where the two functions
have not been separated.
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| Interview conducted by David Clark, 17 November 1998 |
| Interview Duration: 1 hour, 32 minutes |
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