During the gap before the start of her medical studies, she worked as a nursing assistant at an orthopaedic hospital, and she had been in this role the day the National Health Service (NHS) came into being.
[1] She returned to England in 1965 and took up a post at St Thomas' Hospital, where she was appointed consultant oncologist in 1967 with a specialist interest in breast cancer.
She visited St Luke's Hospital in New York in 1977, and observed the hospital-based palliative care team there, becoming convinced that such practice should be brought over to Britain.
Her colleagues at the hospital were critical of her approach and warned her that looking into the "soft[er] option" of palliative care would ruin her career, but she was undeterred.
[1] She set up the first hospital-based palliative care team in the United Kingdom in December 1977,[1] titled the "St Thomas' Hospital Terminal Care Support Team", and composed of Bates, the oncology registrar, a nurse that had moved from St Christopher's Hospice, the hospital chaplain, and a part-time social worker.
Bates had initially expected resistance to the idea from her colleagues and devised the advisory nature of the team as a result of her consultations with other physicians.
[1] She retired in 1991, just as the first British academic palliative care department was established at St Thomas', with Geoffrey Hanks at the helm.