Radiographer celebrates 50 years at Central Middlesex

One of the UK’s longest serving radiographers has celebrated her 50th work anniversary. Bozenna Wereszczynska, 71, began working as a radiographer at Central Middlesex Hospital in 1969, the year of Woodstock, the Vietnam War and Neil Armstrong walking on the Moon. She plumped for radiography after a visiting radiographer gave a talk at her convent school.

Central Middlesex Hospital had an international reputation and was home to a number of pioneering doctors. Horace Joules was the driving force behind the introduction of the Clean Air Act, Richard Doll proved the link between smoking and cancer, while Francis Avery Jones was recognised as the ‘father of gastroenterology.’

The dominant feature of Central Middlesex Hospital was a half-mile long corridor that ran from one end of the hospital to the other. Wereszczynska said: “The radiography department was at one end and theatres at the other, so we rushed up and down it all day taking x-ray cassettes to be processed in the darkroom.

“We’d then head back to theatres with the developed film dripping down the corridor. It was a bit like Doctor in the House, a popular TV show in the 1970s, with doctors in long white coats and nurses wearing butterfly caps, but the camaraderie was fantastic. It felt like one big family.

A few oddities have shown up on her x-rays over the years including coins, a bar of soap, pens, a giant tapeworm and sachets of heroin swallowed by a drug mule.

Published on page 2 of the July 2019 issue of RAD Magazine.