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Obituary: Brenda Slaney, a pioneer of OH nursing, died on 23 September aged 78 years
Brenda Slaney devoted her life to nursing and in particular to occupational health where she was very well known both nationally and internationally.
She started her occupational health nursing career in 1947 at the British American Optical Company, which employed 500 people making spectacle frames and lenses. She found industrial nursing, as it was then known, full of challenges as she coped with the injuries caused by working with glass, occupational dermatitis and, as was common in those days, tuberculosis.
She took the six month industrial nursing course at the RCN and was in the last group to be called industrial nurses. Brenda valued her training highly and considered the practical skills of an OH nurse as essential to practice, saying, "Unless you can actually see the job and empathise with the workforce you have no idea...