Page 70 - QARANC Vol 20 No 4 2023

70 The Gazette QARANC Association
OBITUARY
Lady Patricia Swinfen: ‘She did so much to help the world’s poor and disabled’
Lady Patricia Ann Swinfen MBE (nee’ Blackmore), who died on 9 February 2023, aged 86, was a Lieutenant in the QARANC from 1961-62 and established the Swinfen Trust with her late husband Roger, which establishes Telemedicine links around the globe.
Pat was born in Dublin and trained at the Adelaide Hospital. She said this stood her in good stead when she joined the QAs as her training had been very strict and rigorous.
In 1961 she attended basic training at Hazlemere and was then posted to Millbank. Her most vivid memory of that posting was how on edge everyone was as the Colonel in Chief, HRH Princess Margaret, was prone to arrive at short notice to have a look around.
Pat’s next posting was to British Military Hospital Mtarfa, Malta (later the Royal Navy hospital). She started in the paediatric ward and was moved to the prison underneath the hospital to look after the prisoners, doing a 12 hour shift due to lack of staff. She remembered the hospital having to close on one occasion due to a plague of rats.
Pat was sent to BMH Benghazi to provide cover for a colleague who had returned home sick. It was there, at a beach party, she met her husband to be, Roger Swinfen.
She returned to Malta and from there to BMH Tripoli, but as luck had it, Roger’s battalion was posted to Tripoli and the romance continued.
Whilst there, a flight from the Congo full of injured United Nations Irish soldiers stopped off as some were too ill to continue the journey home. As many as 43 were hospitalised and cared for by Pat and others.
Speaking about the experience
years later, Pat recalled being
billeted to a house in the woods
where she frequently felt unsafe
and once having to scare off an
remembered an amusing episode where she had to take the pyjamas from the patients and make them stay in their beds until they could be washed and dried, to shouts of “What happens if there is a fire sister?”.
Pat served in Libya until October 1962, before returning to the UK to be married, the engagement between Pat and Roger having been announced in The Times in February 1962. On marrying, she resigned her commission, devoted herself to her children and continued to work as a nurse and a volunteer for the Soldier, Sailors, Airmen and Families Association (SSAFA).
In the 1980s Roger began working with John Grooms Association for the disabled and developed an interest in legislation to improve disability rights and capability. In 1995 Roger and Pat met Professor Richard Wootton, a world authority in telemedicine and telehealth, and decided to pilot study into telemedical links between remote hospitals in the developing world and consultants in more up-to-date hospitals.
In those early days, telemedical links were established with digital cameras, a laptop, and a satellite phone. Pat went to Bangladesh in 1999 to set-up the link there, and others were established in Kosovo, Nepal, and the Solomon Islands.
Pat and Roger’s organisation, the Swinfen Trust, said Pat’s training as a QA and at the Adelaide established a standard of nursing that never left her and was to act as the guiding principle throughout her later work with the charity.
They added: “The partnership between Roger and Pat was one of equals and they adored each other. They pulled together as a team and when one struggled the other pulled stronger. Both Pat
and Roger worked tirelessly to help people in need and have left a lasting legacy with the continuation of the Trust. Pat will be missed greatly by her children, grandchildren, and the extended family.”
intruder. She also