Nick Dowling, 60, Pursues Nursing Apprenticeship After Covid-Era Consultancy Shift Online
Updated
Updated · The Guardian · Jun 15
Nick Dowling, 60, Pursues Nursing Apprenticeship After Covid-Era Consultancy Shift Online
2 articles · Updated · The Guardian · Jun 15
Summary
Nick Dowling, 60, is training as a nursing associate and expects to qualify this autumn after leaving a long career in engineering, manufacturing and consultancy.
Covid-era remote work pushed the change: when his consultancy moved online in 2020, he said screen-based work quickly became dull while his ambulance-service volunteering grew more urgent and rewarding.
£14-an-hour apprenticeship shifts have taken him through GP, psychiatric, ward and urgent-treatment placements, often lasting 12 hours despite paying less than he had earned for decades.
A six-month stint on a dementia ward in Cape Cod at age 21 first exposed him to care work, and he now sees the move into nursing as a deliberate return rather than an accident.
Dowling, guided toward NHS roles by his daughter, hopes for a seven-year second career and says his decision reflects a long-held drive for learning and change.