Nick Dowling, 60, was the only soul in the doctor's waiting room when a practice nurse emerged, scanned the area, and asked the receptionist where the student was. Dowling raised his hand. He's now an apprentice nursing associate, hoping to qualify this autumn - after decades in engineering and manufacturing, and a brief, soul-crushing stint watching his consultancy job go online.
Dowling grew up in Dundalk, Ireland, so close to the Northern Ireland border that during the Troubles it was cheekily called El Paso. He earned a quality engineering degree in the mid-1980s and, like many 21-year-olds, headed to the US for a summer. In Cape Cod, Massachusetts, he landed a job as a nurse's aide on a dementia ward, feeding patients and emptying bedpans. The first shift was so horrifying he vowed never to return, but a senior nurse - probably because she actually cared about patients - talked him into sticking around for six months. Then he moved to England, got a "proper job" in quality management, and forgot about it.
That "proper" career spanned manufacturing, then consultancy with a psychologist friend, delivering leadership and change-management training around 2012. They leaned on neuroscience, back when neuroplasticity was "still very emergent and largely unknown." He worked on legacy projects like London's Crossrail, South Africa's Medupi power station, and civilianizing Northern Ireland's police force. The idea: improve workplace wellbeing so employees and organizations both perform better.
Then he saw a poster - he can't remember where - advertising volunteering with the ambulance service in West Sussex. He signed up as a first responder for acute emergencies: chest pains, strokes, trauma, falls, burns, bangs, everything. When Covid hit in 2020, his consultancy work went fully online. "Suddenly, you're just talking to a screen," he says. "You're getting nothing back from it. No energy. I got bored quickly." Meanwhile, his volunteer gig got more urgent: taking crew temperatures, delivering Covid tests, moving ambulances, running sustenance trucks.
His daughter, a cardiac physiologist, pointed him to the NHS jobs website. "An ad came up for a healthcare assistant with a team called responsive services," he says. "It took me a long time to actually make the connection and think: hang on, I've done this work before, as a naive 21-year-old. And then there was something about a circle closing." He quotes T.S. Eliot: "The end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."
Now the work is a choice, not an accident. The shifts run 12 hours at £14 an hour - less than he's earned in decades. He hopes for a seven-year career after qualifying. Asked why he made the move, he says: "I value learning. And I think learning and change are synonymous."