This week the Canberra Hospital celebrates 50 years providing health care to the Canberra community.

The Canberra Hospital, originally known as Woden Valley Hospital, officially opened on 24 September 1973 and since then has transformed into the largest general hospital in the ACT and surrounding NSW region.

This milestone offers an important opportunity to say thank you to everyone who has worked at the hospital over the last 50 years.

Cathie Stoffell is one of those staff members. She began training as a student nurse at the Royal Canberra Hospital in January 1972.

She had finished high school just two months before.

“I was 17. Students were required to live-in then, and I remember my brother and father were allowed to come up to the room, but there were no males allowed,” she said.

“There was just one man in our course. He was paving new ground at the time. Other male nurses followed, of course.”

The three-year course moved at a cracking pace. “We were apprentices, really. We had six weeks of training – injecting oranges and lifting ‘Mrs Bedford’, the dummy, onto the bedpan. From there we were launched onto various wards and were straight into it,” Cathie said.

It was a confronting start for a teenager, and Cathie recalls her first experience of a patient’s death, when a young girl died from leukemia.

“We would debrief amongst ourselves, I suppose. There was nothing formal. It was a regimented sort of atmosphere. There were always bedpans you could be scrubbing so we just got on with it.”

Overall, though, Cathie recalls having “a ball”, getting up to all kinds of “shenanigans” with her fellow students.

“We used to find the leftover meals and eat them in the linen cupboard,” she said.

Starting at the then-Woden Valley Hospital was quite exciting, and Cathie remembers the newness of it all.

In 1973 when the Canberra Hospital opened its doors, things looked pretty different.

The hospital had 36 beds and served a population of around 172,000 with about 175 staff members.

Fifty years on, the Canberra Hospital has over 650 beds and is the only tertiary hospital between Sydney and Melbourne, caring for a population of more than 650,000 people from the ACT and surrounding region, with thousands of staff on the campus at any time of the day or night.

With the new Critical Services Building opening next year, the hospital will offer more emergency, surgical and critical care, with a brand-new emergency department, more operating theatres and more intensive care beds.

Cathie’s early training held her in excellent stead for many other opportunities, and she has nursed all over the world.

It also helped her form a close-knit group of friends, all of whom stayed in nursing careers.

They have a group chat on Messenger and celebrated a 50-year reunion recently.

Like Canberra Hospital, nursing has changed over the years. There are no more starched aprons and pleated hats, and technology plays a much greater role for all staff.

Having worked everywhere from the UK to Saudi Arabia, Cathie loves Canberra and continues to nurse here.

“I remember on day one of our training, they asked us if anyone had changed their minds and three people left,” she said.

Having had such a full career over five decades, Cathie is pleased she stayed.

^{Cathie at her graduation}

^{Cathie Stoffell today}

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