There were two full time medical staff ; the Superintendent , Dr Sligo and a House Surgeon , me . There were also two part-time surgeons , Drs Mark and Park who did the two lists each week and attended to the acute cases . They worked week and week about . The local general practitioners attended to the obstetric cases in the Maternity Annexe which was nearby . There was no physician , no radiologist and no pathologist .
There were some visiting specialists including a Tuberculosis Officer from Hamilton and later from Rotorua . He did a clinic every fortnight , seeing numerous patients collected by the District Nurses .
Mr Selwyn Morris , an Orthopaedic Surgeon came down from Auckland twice a year on a small plane , which landed on the racecourse . He saw mainly children with orthopaedic problems and adults by special arrangement . Dr Pickerill and his wife Cecily , both Plastic Surgeons , saw children with congenital defects and arranged for some to be treated in Wellington . They came twice a year and stayed for two days ; the second day they spent operating on minor cases .
The X-ray Department had a main room with the usual universal x-ray plant , such as a couch with an over-couch tube for doing most x-rays . It could be raised up to the vertical and had an under-couch tube and a screen for doing barium studies of the stomach and bowel . There was also a very fine Westinghouse portable , which the medical staff could use when the radiographer was not available . There was a radiographer , but no radiologist , so the doctors had to report based on the patients ’ films .
The laboratory consisted of a small wooden hut , with some basic equipment and a few chemicals to do simple tests . The equipment was not cleaned properly and the doctors were not trained laboratory technicians , so anything important was sent by bus to Waikato .
In spite of all the problems , two areas of the hospital functioned very well .
The first was the nursing service . Tauranga was a training school for nurses and the girls were a very dedicated group who worked hard and well . The second was the standard of the surgery . Both surgeons were London trained and were able to perform excellent surgery .
Dr Neil Goodwin , Retired Specialist Anaesthetist and Director Intensive Care Unit
The hospital had an area in the middle of the second floor , above the cafeteria , in which limited intensive care could be performed in the early 1980 ’ s . Patients were usually transferred to either Hamilton or Auckland if they needed prolonged care .
In 1985 , having successfully opened the first ICU in Africa in Durban in 1970 , I was looking to relocate to a less stressful environment . For several years I had been very friendly with Dr Matt Spence , who was the doyen of Intensive Care in New Zealand . We often met at international conferences . He suggested that I should think of coming to New Zealand .
“ I ’ ve just the spot for you in one of the nicest towns to live in , it ’ s called Tauranga . They need someone to build and run an ICU there ,” he said . He then negotiated a new post with the Hospital Board ; I was appointed and arrived in December 1986 .
Designing a new ICU was easy , but deciding where to put it was a problem . If it took over an existing ward the extra space required for ICU care would reduce the hospital bed total . Tauranga only just had enough beds to qualify as a major establishment and any reduction would have a major effect on funding and staff salaries . We looked everywhere from the basement to the roof garden .
Fortunately , in the next budget , this all changed and we were able to go ahead and build in what had been Ward 7 , conveniently close to the operating theatres . The new unit included cubicles for six Coronary Care beds , six ICU beds in an open plan area , two isolation rooms plus all the necessary storage , gas and power supplies . The ICU medical staff were all from the Department of Anaesthesia and provided a 24 / 7 cover at specialist level .
This fourth floor unit was used until 2012 when it was replaced by the new complex of High Dependency , Intensive and Coronary Care Units .
Did You Know ?
Today over 225,000 New Zealanders have type 1 or type 2 diabetes and it ’ s on the increase in New Zealand . Over the past 20 years , advances in treatment have led to the development of many new types of insulin and ability for patients to self-monitor blood glucose .
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