Pharmacist's 50 years | News and events

A Cambridgeshire pharmacist who started her degree in pharmacy the same year The Beatles played The Cavern Club in Liverpool is celebrating more than 50 years working for the NHS. 

In 1967, NHS Cambridgeshire & Peterborough employee Janet Watkinson began her degree in Liverpool, the home of The Beatles, at Liverpool School of Pharmacy. After graduation she started her career in Nottingham City Hospital as a pharmacist on the cancer ward. Janet continued working mainly in oncology and immunology hospital wards for nearly thirty years until she moved to Cambridgeshire in 1999.

Swapping her Anfield season ticket for Cambridge United, Janet joined the inspectorate team at the Commission for Health Improvement (CHI) in Cambridge, where she worked assessing NHS care, continuing to put patients at the heart of her work. Janet first attempted to retire in 2009, just at the start of the H1N1 flu pandemic but was asked to return to help with the efforts across the county. And now over 50 years into her career Janet works in NHS Cambridgeshire & Peterborough’s medicines optimisation team, as a specialist pharmacist. 

Janet said, “One of the greatest gifts given by the NHS are the friends you make on the way. My first flatmate who worked at Nottingham with me is still one of my closest friends and along with those picked up along the journey continue to enrich my life. We all joined the NHS with the same purpose – to improve the health of the population and when I look at my team today and at my clinical colleagues in our hospitals, I believe that still holds true today.

“As I come to the end of my career, I look back on the immense progress we have made in pharmaceuticals from rolling pills on a dispensary bench to manufacturing biologicals from hardworking E. coli. bacteria. Having now decoded the genome I believe the future is now and will be even more extraordinary thanks to the NHS and those who work within it.” 

Prof Satya Sarker, Director of School of Pharmacy and Biomolecular Sciences at Liverpool John Moores University, said: “On behalf of the university and the School of Pharmacy and Biomolecular Sciences, I congratulate Janet on reaching this wonderful milestone of 50 years working for the NHS. Fittingly, it comes as we are celebrating 175 years of pharmacy education in Liverpool. Pharmacists play an invaluable role in our communities and healthcare settings helping to improve people’s health and Janet will have made a real difference to so many people’s lives. We wish her well in her future endeavours.”

The full story of Janet’s career can be found online https://www.cpics.org.uk/nhs75-blog/janet-watkinsons-story-2203