Themes
The Navy's People
Learning
Julia Massey
Article highlights
After the Falklands
Massey returned safely from the war. She went to work at the RNH at Gibraltar as a deputy matron in June 1983. She returned to RNH Haslar as a ward sister the following summer.
She made the decision to leave clinical nursing in January 1986. She now worked in an administrative capacity for the QARNNS, becoming the allocating officer at Haslar hospital.
Massey undertook a six month appointment to the Defence Nursing Services Directorate in the Ministry of Defence (MOD) in London at the beginning of 1987. She then received another promotion, becoming Chief Nursing Officer in June 1987 and returned to RNH Haslar as Deputy Matron.
She became Matron of RNH Haslar in June 1988. Her next role was as Principal Nursing Officer in September 1989 and she became Nursing Staff Officer to Surgeon Rear Admiral Support Medical Services.
QARNNS Hospital Matron Uniform (RNM)
She returned to the MOD in 1992, working in the Matron in Chief's Office. She served as the Nursing Services Officer for the Navy for the following two years.
Her next position was at the Institute of Naval Medicine, where Massey assisted with preparations for the new Tri-Service medical organisation planned between the Navy, Army and Royal Air Force during the last two years of her QARNNS career.
She was mainly involved with planning the nursing element of Haslar Hospital, as well as bringing together the three services' Nursing Training Organisation. She also had responsibility for the MOD hospital unit at Derriford Hospital in Plymouth.
Massey voluntarily took redundancy in 1995, leaving the QARNNS a year before she would have been due to retire in January 1996. She became Chairman of the QARNNS Association in 1998.
