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The following is an edited obituary of Patsy written for national press publication.

patsy1Our aunt Patsy Wright-Warren, who has died aged 86, was a Queen’s Nurse whose bold heart and clear voice won respect and recognition for her profession. Inspired to serve in the National Health Service when it was still in its infancy, she later represented nursing at the top level of NHS decision-making and brought new focus to a group of charities founded by Leonard Cheshire and Sue Ryder.

Leaving school in 1946, Patsy’s career choice was inspired by the story of Elizabeth Kenny, a nursing sister treating patients in the Australian bush. Patsy threw herself into training at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in post-Blitz London. Patsy recalled lots of very hard work, treating illness and disease with limited resources. She loved it, proud to be helping to build the foundations of the NHS as nurse, midwife, health visitor and sometimes all three.

A constructive insider, Patsy demonstrated a willingness to speak up for her profession on the front line of the health service. Colleagues found her to be a tenacious advocate for nurses when she transferred to the corridors of Whitehall and became Deputy Chief Nursing Officer. She was popular with other civil servants; she was nonetheless strong in wording her arguments to ensure the financial and practical needs of nurses to deliver appropriate care for patients were well known at all levels.

Apatsy2fter a career in community nursing and national health policy making, Patsy might reasonably have retired to the modest pursuits of an English gentlewoman, singing in local choirs, training hearing dogs, raising funds for faraway charities and deadheading the roses in her leafy Buckinghamshire garden, albeit occasionally challenging local assumptions with a Laboursupporting election poster in her cottage window. She might have been content to be active in the deanery synod, become clerk to the parish council, or take part in amateur dramatics, whilst looking after the well-being of neighbours and the fabric of her village environment. She might have used her new-found time simply to nurture friendships and family bonds, to support her widowed sister Diana and our large family and cook the Christmas turkey. Indeed, she did all these things, with energy and kindness, but it was not enough. She decided to park the CBE for services to nursing on the kitchen shelf, rediscover her inner Sister Kenny and volunteer for some ‘part time’ caring work in developing countries.

Patsy went to meet Leonard Cheshire and her life upon retirement gained wider horizons. For my aunt’s generation, the founder of the Cheshire Homes was an awesome hero of the Second World War and the post-war peace. Like Cheshire, Patsy believed in patiently working to change things for the better. He asked her to work as project officer in a charity he had founded with Sue Ryder when they married in 1959. On first name terms with Patsy, he later wrote to her in a Christmas card ‘we are so lucky to have you’.

The Ryder-Cheshire Foundation was an eclectic collection of charitable causes dear to the hearts of the founders, ranging from supporting the disabled in the UK to tackling tuberculosis and the rehabilitation of leprosy sufferers at the Raphael centre in India, with an office base in an English stately home and funding from Australia and New Zealand. So it was that in her 60s and 70s, Patsy travelled the globe by bus, train and rickshaw and when necessary slept on the floor in Nepal or Tanzania to hold the charity together, professionalise it and raise funds. As chairman of the charity after the founders‘ deaths, she oversaw the transition of its work into more targeted organisations for fighting the ongoing challenge of tuberculosis in developing countries, whilst Enrych (formerly Ryder-Cheshire Volunteers) continues its focus on enabling leisure and learning possibilities for disabled people in the UK today.

Patsy took inspiration from Cheshire and Kenny to pursue a life of practical Christian purpose and became herself an inspiration to others.
Richard Westlake

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