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Matron, Medicine and Me

Series 2

Episode 5: Denise Lewis

Duration: 44 minutes

First broadcast: on BBC One HDLatest broadcast: on BBC One Wales

Denise Lewis returns to New Cross Hospital in Wolverhampton to retrace the footsteps of her grandmother, who worked as a nurse for 40 years after arriving from Jamaica in the 1950s. Through meeting current and former NHS staff, Denise sees how the NHS has changed through the years and what her grandmother's experiences would have been as a Jamaican nurse in 1950s and 1960s Britain.

Denise explores what has changed at the hospital since her grandmother worked there, getting a glimpse into their brand new heart and lung centre and witnessing the cutting-edge surgery that the NHS provides.

But there is another, even more personal reason that Denise wants to return - for the hospital her nan worked in is the one which treated and cared for her before she passed away in 2005 from breast cancer. Denise visits the ward her nan was treated in and hears stories of life in the NHS today from patients and staff there.

The number of people surviving some of the most common types of cancer has doubled since the foundation of National Health Service 70 years ago. Denise meets NHS doctors to hear why that is and meets the patients undergoing groundbreaking anti-cancer treatments. Show less

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