Whipps Cross Hospital in the 1980s
Following another NHS reorganisation in 1982, the hospital came under the administration of Waltham Forest District Health Authority.
'The Team on B6'
This film from the early 1980s captures nursing practice and daily routine on a general medical ward at Whipps Cross. Several of the nurses on the ward are Irish, and one of them notes how her interview took place in Ireland. This reflects the long tradition of Whipps Cross training and employing nurses from the Irish diaspora, from at least the days of Matron Fogarty, who was herself from Ireland, and started at Whipps in 1944.
Hospital radio
becomes a charity
Whipps Cross Hospital Radio, which had begun in 1969, broadcasting from a wooden shed on the hospital site, and funded by the Walthamstow Lions Club, became a registered charity in 1983.
Shows were broadcast to Whipps Cross, as well as Wanstead and Chingford Hospitals. Volunteers were recruited through the hospital volunteering team and premises, phones and power were provided by the
hospital management. In 1980 a line was connected to Leyton Orient Football Club ground to allow live commentary on Saturday afternoons.
​
Barts Health NHS Trust Archives, RLHWR/PU/2
The Margaret Centre opens
The Margaret Centre opened on the Whipps Cross site in 1987 to provide palliative and end-of-life care for patients with life-limiting illnesses, as well as pastoral and spiritual support from the hospital's chaplaincy team.
​
Barts Health NHS Trust Archives, RLHWX/P/4/46