Professionally, she is a State Registered Nurse and State Certified Midwife, but in her role as a PALS nurse, Josephine Wright has also been a counsellor, diplomat, comforter and friend.

Loved and respected by all whose lives she has touched, even she can't believe that her long career with Bermuda's cancer charity is coming to an official end tomorrow.

It is not that she has been overtaken by old age or infirmity, but there comes a time in everyone's life when their priorities change and they want to enjoy other aspects of life; and so it is with Josie, as she is popularly known.

Mrs. Wright began her nursing career in England, where she gained her SRN and midwifery qualifications, and then worked first as a district midwife, travelling everywhere by pedal cycle armed with her bag of delivery instruments, and then as a ward sister at the Royal Infirmary in Liverpool.

In the early 1970s she decided it was time for a change, so she joined the King Edward VII Memorial Hospital as a staff nurse in the intensive care and recovery wards.

Like many of her colleagues, the then-Miss Sareen eventually met and married the man of her dreams, Bermudian Vaughan Wright, and went on to raise two sons, Jeremy and Anthony.

It was while doing private duty nursing in 1985 that she successfully applied to become a PALS nurse, and then went to the Royal Marsden Hospital in London to take a course in symptom control and cancer nursing.

"That was a wonderful foundation to work with," Mrs. Wright remembers.

"It also taught me counselling and bereavement counselling. Everybody is an individual, and everybody is special and has their own uniqueness about them."

At that time, she joined Liz Hanson as the second PALS nurse and, like her colleague, she soon became a familiar sight travelling around the Island in her van with the familiar blue logo.

In those days, Mrs. Wright often had to park some distance from the home she was visiting because the public perception of cancer patients was such that the family didn't want people to know a loved one was ill.

Meanwhile, back at PALS' Cedar Avenue headquarters, her shared office had one desk and one chair, so competition for the lone seat was keen.

Looking back on those early days, Mrs. Wright is delighted at just how much PALS has grown in the interim.

Today, five nurses with vans share the case load, and the space at the current headquarters, Dunrossil House on Point Finger Road, while far from perfect, at least afforded the nurses their own office with more than one desk.

But even that is about to change as PALS moves to its own purpose-built facility with room galore.

"It is incredible really," Mrs. Wright says, "and we also have every piece of equipment you can imagine, all of it free for the patients to use."

In terms of patient care, the nurse says so much has changed for the better.

For one thing, the PALS van is now a welcome sight outside a patient's home, and for another, the outlook and treatment methods have improved enormously.

"When I started out cancer was felt to be terminal, but not any more," she says.

"It has become a chronic illness which requires much more help in the way of counselling.

"We counsel generally on the latest developments and treatments that are available; on diet; and on rehabilitating people and getting them back into doing things again.

"Patients undergoing chemotherapy are referred to us because there may be a few little hiccups here and there when they begin treatment.

"Today they have such wonderful antinausea medications that people rarely have to complain about the nausea and vomiting that they used to experience when I started out, so they are able to go back to work and back into life, so to speak.

"Cancer, when it is caught early enough, is highly treatable in most cases."

Not only is the PALS nurse upbeat about the strides which have been made in treatment and rehabilitation of cancer patients, but she also has high praise for Dr. June Walters, the new board-certified oncologist at King Edward, whom she describes as "wonderful".

"She is very knowledgable and very accessible.

"We can always get hold of her if we are running into problems with any of her patients, which makes it easier for us," she says.

"We can also co nsult her at the weekly tumour conference."

Mrs. Wright is also grateful for a similar spirit of cooperation shared with the police service, who have come to her assistance on occasion when she needed help lifting a patient, as well as the good relationship PALS enjoys with both the hospital's Oncology Department and Agape House.

In an overview of the cancer charity's mission, Mrs. Wright defines PALS' primary role as "cancer care" as opposed to "terminal care".

"We take care of people who have cancer in their diagnosis," she says.

"I was there to counsel and help them through their treatments if they had any problems.

"Very often, at the end of six months or a year, I took them off my books and they were on their own, although they could always come back if they ran into any other problems, of course."

Her normal working day was 8.30 a.m. to 5 p.m., and she averaged five patients per day.

While visits were loosely timed, if they extended beyond what she had estimated, it didn't matter.

As always, the patient came first.

Since the greatest wish of cancer patients is to remain in their own homes, Mrs. Wright says that, like all PALS nurses, she worked to support that aim.

"If somebody was very ill and wanted to remain in their home, I liaised with the family doctor or oncologist to do symptom control and make them as comfortable as possible.

"The idea is always to keep people pain-free, lucid, and where they want to be - at home," she says.

"We draw blood when patients are unable to go to the hospital, and we give injections.

"In short, we can do all the things they do at the hospice.

"We are there with patients right to the end, and a dignified end is what we try to ensure.

"Death is part of life, and we try to make it a normal happening rather than a sterile, clinical experience."

Of course, it was not only the patient's needs which the nurse had to address, but also the concerns and emotions of the family, including children, which is where her training and years of experience came into play.

"Knowing how to behave was very important because you were always a guest in somebody else's home and you could not do anything without permission," Mrs. Wright says.

"It was important not to be a `presence', but to glide in gently.

"You also learned to think for yourself, be resourceful, and not make the home like a hospital, but to keep it as comfortable and homelike as possible."

In terms of building a successful relationship with her patients, the nurse reached a mutual understanding of what they were both trying to achieve, and how they were going to reach their goal.

Diplomacy was needed in bridging the gaps between reality and denial, which often surfaced within a family.

"Very often the family was more in denial than the patient, who was often quite happy to admit that he or she was more worried about how the family would cope than they were about themselves," she says.

"But I was trained to listen and have them let go of all their feelings knowing that these were safe with me.

"I think it was very therapeutic for them to be able to unload.

"My reality was always with the patient."

In fact, Mrs. Wright says she served as the patient's advocate, often accompanying them on a visit to the doctor and generally being there for them.

"Very often when people are stressed out with their illness they don't really hear what the doctor is saying, but that is Nature's way sometimes, and a response to protecting yourself, so I could sort out what had taken place at the doctor's."

Asked how she managed to cope over the years with the death of patients whom she had inevitably grown to know well in the course of caring for them, Mrs. Wright said closure came through attending their funeral, and then contacting the families later as a final ending.

Thereafter, she reflected on the good memories associated with that patient.

In looking back on her 17-year career with PALS, again it is the memories of working with such a great team of fellow nurses - Joanne Armstrong, Ann Brown, Shirley Higgs and Lindsay Manderson - as well as CEO Mrs. Ann Smith Gordon, and all the volunteers that Mrs. Wright says she will forever cherish.

"I have enjoyed every one of them.

"They have been amazing. I am going to miss Ann for her passion and Bermudian sense of humour, which is so unique.

"She is good to be around.

"It has been a very rewarding experience, and being allowed by Bermudians to be almost part of their families has been a privilege.

"They always made me so welcome, but I don't feel I am leaving because I will be available to help," she says.

Having dealt extensively with both ends of the life cycle in her career, Mrs. Wright says that while she enjoyed delivering babies most of all, her work with PALS was one of spiritual growth, particularly in terms of learning about human kindness one to another, and she marvels at the way former patients and their families still remember her years later.

Now it is time to move on, and the nurse is looking forward to spending more time with her husband, children and grandchildren, as well as visiting her elderly mother in England more often.

She also plans to join the Garden Club with the aim of having "the best garden in Bermuda"; take art lessons; and eventually become involved in volunteer work because that is the Wright way.