A nurse who came to England as a teenager for a one-year adventure is celebrating six decades in the profession - and has no plans to hang up her uniform. Vibeke Karner Nicklin will turn 80 on October 26, having spent 60 years caring for patients across the country, including more than four decades working at Clatterbridge and Arrowe Park.
From au pair to NHS career
Her journey to a lifetime in British healthcare began in Denmark, where she grew up dreaming of becoming a nurse. In 1964, aged just 17, she travelled to England with a friend to work as an au pair while waiting to begin her nursing training.
She told the ECHO: “I wanted to be a nurse, and in Denmark they like you to have a year out where you don’t live at home so you get used to taking orders and your parents don’t do everything for you. A lot of people at the time went abroad and were au pair girls.
“It was sort of an adventure at the same time as waiting till you could start your training.”
Vibeke and her friend travelled by boat to Harwich before taking the train to London, where they were met by their respective host families. She spent a year working as an au pair in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, before beginning her nursing training at Amersham General Hospital in 1965.
Meeting her husband
But her trip to England would change the course of her life in more ways than one. Her friend went on to become an au pair for the sister of the man who would eventually become Vibeke's husband, Roger Nicklin.
She said: “I literally came to be an au pair girl for a year, but then I met my husband, and that was it, basically.”
Vibeke moved to the Wirral in 1966, aged 18, to be closer to Roger, who had returned to the area after his sister became ill. The pair now live in Prenton.
She said: “I think the Wirral is just beautiful. It's got so many trees, it's got beaches, it's, you know, we're not far from Chester, we're not far from Liverpool. It's got everything.”
Overcoming early setbacks
Her nursing career has not been without its challenges. Having arrived in England with limited English, Vibeke had to adapt to a new country while learning the skills needed to care for patients.
She said: “I wasn’t fluent when I first arrived in the country, but my English very much improved in that year that I was an au pair. My husband, his sister, and her husband were fantastic.
“We spent a lot of time together, and they were very good when we were having a conversation because if I didn’t understand something, they would stop the conversation and explain. It was a tremendous help.”
But one of the biggest setbacks came during her nursing training, when an administrative mistake meant she had to start again after believing she had successfully transferred from Amersham to Clatterbridge Hospital.
Vibeke had already completed a year of training when she moved to Wirral, only to be told that she would have to begin the course again. Her training ultimately took four years instead of the three she had expected.
She said: “I’d applied to transfer to Clatterbridge and I got a letter to confirm that so I moved up here and did a month or two carrying on my training but then the head of nursing at the time called me in and said, ‘I’m awfully sorry i read the letter wrong you haven’t had a transfer, you have to start all over again.
“I was so upset, but when you're 18, you're not taking on the establishment, are you? I felt like I couldn’t stand up and say something or do anything about it but that was a long, long time ago now.”
Despite the setback, Vibeke qualified and went on to build a career spanning several hospitals.
A career of change
After marrying Roger in Denmark on August 1, 1970, the couple moved to Reading, where she worked at the Royal Berkshire Hospital. They later moved to Blackburn, where she worked at Blackburn Royal Infirmary before returning to Clatterbridge around 1980.
She eventually moved to Arrowe Park after staff from Clatterbridge were transferred following the closure of the hospital's old buildings.
Over the years, she has witnessed extraordinary changes in how hospitals operate and how patients are treated.
She said: “Nursing has changed in every way you can imagine. In the old days, we looked like nurses. We looked crisp, clean, and disciplined.
“But I think the biggest change is infection control. We didn’t wear gloves, so when you cleaned somebody, you didn’t have gloves on, which sounds ridiculous. It would never happen today. Gloves are worn for everything now.
“Also everything is sterizlied these days. We packed drums for cotton wool and boiled up needles and reused them.”
Sterilisation and modern infection-control practices have transformed the way care is delivered, while advances in surgery mean patients can often return home far sooner than they once would have.
Vibeke added that patients recovering from an appendix operation would once have stayed in hospital for around a week, whereas some can now go home the same day following keyhole surgery.
But she believes the pressure on hospitals has grown, with patients often more seriously ill and beds in increasingly short supply.
She said: “The ward I'm on, we are always full. We're literally sending one patient home, and the bed is full within half an hour.
“We were never short of beds like we are now. When people come into A&E these days, it’s a nightmare. I feel sorry for the patients, and I’m not blaming anybody for that.
“There just isn’t the capacity. I think people are far more ill than they used to be. People used to stay in hospital for much longer after a surgery.”
No plans to retire
Despite the frustrations, Vibeke said she has no plans to retire and feels fortunate to still be in good health, and has never dreaded going to work.
She said: “It feels like a long time because I’ve never done anything else, but it feels good, and I still enjoy it. I mean, there’s ups and downs, but I’ve never sat at home and thought, ‘Oh god, I’m going to work tonight, I don’t want to go’. So I am so lucky because I can’t think of anything worse than that. That must be awful.”
For Vibeke, nursing has never simply been a job to pay the bills. It is the only career she said she has ever wanted, and one that has continued to give her satisfaction through six decades of enormous change.
She said: “I’ve never wanted to be anything else for as long as I can remember. It was sort of always understood that I would be a nurse.
“You meet so many different people, and I obviously enjoy looking after people.”
She added: “I know it’s cliché, but I don’t feel 80. I’m lucky I’ve got my health and everything else. I don’t find it hard work to go to work. People keep saying to me, ‘Oh, when do you want to retire?’ I'm like, ‘when I've had enough!’”
Vibeke and Roger, who will turn 80 himself in November, have two daughters, Heidi, 53, and Rebekka, 50, and as they prepare to celebrate her milestone birthday, Vibeke said she is looking forward to marking the occasion with friends, family, and former colleagues.
Around 30 to 40 people are expected to attend her birthday gathering on October 23, including colleagues she has worked with throughout her career.
