Judy Ward first cycled to work as a 16-year-old healthcare assistant at Oxford's Radcliffe Infirmary.

Yesterday, 45 years later, she pedalled the journey for the last time before her retirement, and the increase in city traffic is not the only change she has witnessed.

Colleagues and friends from the Oxford Centre for Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism (OCDEM), based at the RI, held a surprise party in her honour, to thank her for her hard work and dedication.

Mrs Ward, of Botley, started as an auxiliary nurse at the hospital's eye unit, and was due to leave for Southampton following six months of opthalmology training.

But after meeting her husband Peter, they decided to stay in Oxford, where she worked in the eye unit for 30 years.

In 1991, she moved to OCDEM, where she worked in Bagot and Drake Ward.

Mrs Ward said: "I'd always wanted to be a nurse since I was a little girl and when I came for my interview the only nursing course you could do at 16 was the eye course.

"I will miss it all. The RI is like a second home for me. I know every corridor and so many people."

Although the RI is still very much like it was when Mrs Ward started, she has worked through a raft of sweeping changes.

She said: "Things have changed, especially with computers. I know nothing about them and can't even switch them on, which is why it was safe for them to organise this party via e-mail -- they knew I'd never find out.

"When I first started patients would to come in for eye surgery and stay for between 10 days and a fortnight, and now they're usually day cases.

"There's so much new equipment. Things have improved immensely and are so much easier now. But it's still the same nursing."

"Health care is so much better for the patients nowadays," she added.