Shirley Phillips met and travelled widely with her husband who was then an army officer. She worked as a voluntary nurse in a number of overseas countries and was involved in some of the violent results of insurgency. She carried out voluntary nursing in Ghana, Aden, Kenya and she occasionally lectured in the RIPAS Hospital in Brunei. With her husband, for five months in 1984, she helped him when he was with UNESCO on a project in Paris and Nigeria to aid disabled children.