Spry worked at the
Royal Melbourne Hospital and the
Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Adelaide as a young woman. She was Director of Nursing at the Royal Adelaide Hospital from 1973 to 1984. Among the policies advanced during her tenure as director, nurses were no longer required to wear the traditional
nurse's cap or white stockings while on duty; nurses in residence were no longer required to register their absences; and nurses were encouraged and supported to earn college degrees in their field. "I wanted nurses to no longer be seen by anyone as 'handmaidens' to the doctors but to begin to become their equal," she later recalled. Spry served on the South Australia Health Commission, the education committee of the Nurses' Board, and the South Australian branch of the
Australian Nursing Federation. In 1988, she became a member of the
Order of Australia (AM), in the general division. She gave an oral history interview to the J. D. Somerville Oral History Collection at the
State Library of South Australia in 1989. == Personal life ==