Identical Twins And Identical Careers

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30168, 27 June 1963, Page 2

Identical Twins And Identical Careers

Two Christchurch nursing sisters, who are identical twins, are still in step with each other in their career 10 years after graduation. They are Misses Alice Claire Fisher and Anne Marie Fisher, who were both nominated for a postgraduate course in Wellington at a meeting of the North Canterbury Hospital Board yesterday.

At present they are both clinical supervisors Miss Alice Fisher at Christchurch Hospital and Miss Anne Fisher at Princess Margaret Hospital.

Both trained at Chnstehurch Hospital, graduating together in 1953. They did their maternity training at New Plymouth Hospital in 1955 and went overseas together in 1957. For a time they were separated in England, when Alice Fisher nursed Lord Halifax in Yorkshire, and Countess of Iveagh in Surrey, while Anne Fisher nursed privately in London. When they went to France they jointly nursed a child in Paris. Guide Captains After going through Beckenham School in the same classes, they were put in different forms at Christchurch Girls’ High School, but their interests were the same They joined the Girl Guides and both became captains. They kept up their interest in ballroom dancing when they went overseas and both won silver and bronze medals in London.

Because they look so much alike —their faces are the same shape, their hair is brown, their eyes are hazel, and their measurements are similar—mistaken identity is inevitable. Even their parents have blundered. But the sisters take it as a joke. Many a man must have feared he was suffering from double vision on meeting them. Nurse. Nurse

Confusion reached its peak, however, when the Nurses Fisher were on duty in the same ward at Christchurch Hospital. It took the doctors a few bewildering duties to port out the situation. "When we returned from

overseas, we purposely wen' to different hospitals to avoic a mix-up.” Alice Fisher saic yesterday. “But this seem: to have added to the problem Patients, who are transferrec from one hospital to the other are really perplexed wher they leave one of us in one place and meet the other al the next.” Sharing the same firs: initial does not help to cleat

the haze either, her sister said. But there is one clue to the solution when the sisters are standing side by side: Alice is lj inches taller than Anne. Miss L. A. Reid, clinical supervisor at Burwood Hospital, was also nominated for the post-graduate course in Wellington at yesterday’s board meeting.