AFTER almost 50 years working at the cutting edge of science, Joy Bull is getting ready to hang up her lab coat today.

The Oxford University deputy senior radiation protection officer said she has seen huge leaps in knowledge in how radiation is used in healthcare.

She joined the old Radcliffe Infirmary in 1965 and has since worked at city hospitals including the John Radcliffe.

Mrs Bull is based at the JR’s Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine and is responsible for making sure radiation regulations are followed.

Our top stories

The 67-year-old grandmother-of-one said: “I loved every minute of it. I always wanted to work in a hospital and scientific region for the good of mankind and to get to the bottom of awful diseases.”

The Risinghurst resident said: “It has been quite dramatic to see the change and improvement of standards of treatment and the prognosis of the length of patients’ lives. I am very proud.”

The former pupil of Holton Park Grammar School – now Wheatley Park School – remembers attending her interview at the Jericho infirmary with her parents.

She was first “thrown in at the deep end” by performing gastric function tests on patients, which involves inserting a tube into the stomach.

Further work involved using radiology to check patients’ iron balance and a lymphoma cancer clinic at the Churchill Hospital to diagnose and treat people.

Oxford Mail:

  • Mrs Bull with the equipment 

Other disease clinics she has worked on include anaemia, Hodgkin’s Disease and coeliac disease.

The role has moved more towards “dry” desk-based science such as statistics and data analysis than “wet” laboratory-based science. She said: “There were some computers when I started. It was watching where the little light stopped on the numbers and writing it down.

“The legislation that covers radiology is very tight. It has not always been the case. There are things we wouldn’t be allowed to do now that I have done in my career.

“We used to have a patient in the 70s that would come up and eat a radioactive egg from a radioactive chicken to determine their iron absorption.”

She also recalls coming to work on April 26 1986 to find the background radiation counter way up after the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant explosion. She said: “You got to know patients well over the months and years, you see them getting better.”

Mrs Bull saw the talent and compassion of her colleagues in November 2000 when son Adrian was in a car accident on Oxford’s eastern bypass.

He had five broken bones in his neck, three in his back and all ribs on his left, which required two plates in his neck and two to hold his vertebrae together.

As a thank-you she raised £5,000 for “Adrian’s hoist” for the JR’s trauma unit and has since raised more than £50,000 for good causes. Last week the team handed over £1,500 to the Thames Valley and Chiltern Air Ambulance.


Do you want alerts delivered straight to your phone via our WhatsApp service? Text NEWS or SPORT or NEWS AND SPORT, depending on which services you want, and your full name to 07767 417704. Save our number into your phone’s contacts as Oxford Mail WhatsApp and ensure you have WhatsApp installed.