Pamela Ross Marley slipped away peacefully on March 9, 2025, at Malvina Major Retirement Village in Wellington, at age 91.
Marley was born during the Great Depression, and trained as a nurse in the 1950s. She worked and travelled in the UK and Europe in the 1960s, returning to operating theatre nursing in Wellington in 1969.
First theatre nurses group
She was one of the driving forces behind the founding of the first New Zealand operating theatre nurses’ group. The Wellington Theatre Nurses Group was formed in 1969, and in August 1971 it was accepted as a special interest group of the New Zealand Nurses Association (NZNA). (NZNA became NZNO when it amalgamated with the New Zealand Nurses Union in 1993.)
Marley was also involved in staging the first New Zealand perioperative nurses’ “conference” (then called a seminar) in October 1973 and founded the perioperative nurses’ journal, The Dissector, in 1974, serving as its founding editor.
After devoting almost half her life to clinical nursing, she was appointed nurse advisor to the Department of Health in 1980.
Marley never married and had no children, but was the dearly loved daughter of the late Kenneth and Gladys Marley, loved brother of Roger, loved aunt of Brett and Philippa and great-aunt to Loren and Sam.
The Dissector will publish a tribute to Marley in its March-May 2025 issue.
- Michael Esdaile, of Advantage Publishing in Tauranga, has published The Dissector since 1998.
The National Library holds two oral history interviews with Pam Marley.