BOPDHB History Tauranga Hospital Centennial Book | Page 21

Roie Kingan (Ball), Registered Nurse,
Trained 1954
I started with the
Preliminary Class of 1954.
There were five of us in
the class, our tutor was
Sister Natalie Banner and
we graduated in 1958.
In the early 1950’s
you trained in general
nursing and there were
no specialties, however
I spent quite a lot of time in Theatre for some reason or
another. We only had six weeks when we first started with
the Sister and then we went straight into the wards and all
our training from then on was on the wards. Sometimes
you had a Staff Nurse and usually only three nurses per
ward each with 30-something patients.
None of us were married; well you probably weren’t
allowed to be married in those days. We all lived in
the Nurses’ Home and we did everything there. Living
with a whole group of girls in a nursing home was an
amazing experience. We’d all go down for morning tea
and breakfast at a certain time. When we went out, there
was always a big group of us and we were invited to so
many social events. People would ring the Nurses’ Home
at times and say “we’d love some of the girls to come to
something or other,” and as many that wanted to, would
go. The Māori community was a great friend of ours, a
large number of patients were Māori and we went to a lot
of dances, funerals, get-togethers, especially in the
Te Puna area.
When we went out, one of the two Sisters would be
rostered-on and remain at the Nurses’ Home. It would be
an effort at times when you’d find yourself at 12 o’clock or
1 o’clock in the morning trying to evade Sister Bakewell or
whoever was on that night.
The nurses became very close friends because we all
lived and worked together the whole time. That was our
home and nowhere else. You only had one or two days
off a week and if you lived further away sometimes you
got away and sometimes you didn’t. Sometimes you had
a ‘Short-Change’ and you’d be doing afternoon duty one
week and mornings the next. That meant you’d be off at
10 o’clock the night before starting at 6 o’clock the next
morning with no time to go anywhere. So the nurses were
very close. We had a tennis court so a lot of the nurses
played tennis, and a basketball team (now netball). We
played every Saturday afternoon. Of course you weren’t
always the most popular if you were in the team as you
got Saturday afternoon off to play, which meant you had to
have Saturday night off too.

You usually did six weeks at a time working in one ward
and then moved to another ward. Then you’d do night
duty for so long. On night duty there was one nurse on in
each ward, an afternoon supervisor and there was a nurse
that was called a runner and she went from one ward to
another as required. We’d have a telephone but that was
about all. The wards were very close to each other. We
had one long corridor and the three main wards were off
that. Ward 3 was the TB Ward and that was right up the
hill and Ward 6, which was the Geriatric Ward, was also
quite a distance away and some of the girls didn’t like
going up there at night as they were a bit scared.
I spent a lot of time in Theatre, just why I‘m not sure. We
didn’t seem to spend much time in the TB Ward but I think
there was only one nurse on there as it was an isolation
unit and a bit separate. The patients were often in for up to
six months at a time.
We were probably much closer to our doctors and house
surgeons. Now a huge amount of work goes through the
Emergency Department, but in my time our patients nearly
always went straight to the ward therefore you had to be
much closer to doctors because they relied on you so
much.
There was a runner and she came round knocking on your
room door at the Nurses’ Home at 5.15am and we started
work at 6am. It was quite amazing really when I think that
you had only a Sister and sometimes a Staff Nurse, and
maybe two or three nurses who could be from a second
year nurse down to a nurse who had only just come out of
training. You did the whole ward yourself starting at 6am.
Very very few patients went to shower, which was almost
never used, and one toilet I think in the 30-bed ward. So
it was washes in bed and making beds. They were first
woken at 5.30am for panning and then you had to have
them all ready by breakfast at half past seven I think it
was. From then on it was treatments and other things.
In Theatre we had one Sister and sometimes two nurses.
You had a theatre list like today presumably; one surgeon
was on at a special time. We only had two anaesthetists;
one main anaesthetist, Dr Wilkie and Dr Sligo who had
been the Medical Superintendent.

Tauranga Hospital Graduation Class of 1958.

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