Nurse Junirose Gazzingan arrived in Ealing “on the back of a typhoon” and is still working at Ealing Hospital 25 years later, after joining an NHS overseas recruitment drive from the Philippines in the early 2000s.
Ms Gazzingan said: “We took off from Manila in a typhoon and 14 hours later found ourselves standing outside Ealing Hospital.”
She came to the UK aged 25, leaving her husband Julius, a police officer, caring for their one-year-old child until the family reunited a year later. Ms Gazzingan said: “I didn’t have a mobile phone so had to put a call in three times a week until they joined me a year later.”
On arrival, she shared a large house in Southall with other recruits, living two to a room and learning to use household appliances she had never encountered before. Ms Gazzingan said: “A group of us shared a big house in Southall. It was two to a room as well as having to figure out how to use appliances like a vacuum cleaner and microwave which we had never used.”
Southall helped them settle, she said, because it offered familiar food, although pronunciation sometimes caused problems at work. Ms Gazzingan said: “Southall was a good place for us as we could find a lot of Asian food there that suited us.”
Ms Gazzingan said: “I wasn’t a big fan of reading the patient menu out as matron would periodically call me over and correct me. The words ‘butter’ and ‘margarine’ were particularly tricky.”
Nineteen of the original 56 nurses recruited to Ealing still work at the hospital, with another working at Northwick Park. Ms Gazzingan said: “We’ve grown up with Ealing and spent most of our adult lives here. I started on Five North and returned to the ward as a matron several years ago. It felt like coming home.”
She wants to see more Filipino colleagues in senior roles, while valuing the patient contact she would miss away from the ward. Ms Gazzingan added: “Filipinos have a lot to offer and I would like to see more of my colleagues in senior positions but appreciate it isn’t for everyone. I personally enjoy chatting with patients and relatives and would miss that.”
