27The Weekend Sun26 The Weekend Sun

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Right now we are celebrating the Tauranga Hospital Centennial –

100 years of dedicated service to the people of Tauranga and the wider

Bay of Plenty.Earlier this year Phil Cammish, Bay of

Plenty District Health Board CEO put out a request for memories, anecdotes, family stories and photographs to help tell the story of Tauranga Hospital’s fi rst 100 years. What a great response he received. These have been developed into Story Boards that now line the main corridor at the hospital. If you are up there, take the time to read them and fi nd out some of the interesting stories about the people who have made this a great hospital over the years. These are stories from patients, people who have worked there as well as current staff.

I have a couple of stories myself from past experience with the hospital – the fi rst goes back to the 1950s when we were living at Pyes Pa. My older brother spent quite a long time in the hospital with osteomyelitis in

his anklebone. This was before the antibiotics that would be used to treat this disease today, and he had to have numerous operations. He was in those old wards that are long gone. I well remember being bored stiff while we were visiting him every day so I would amuse myself climbing in and out the windows; the staff were very patient with this exuberant 10-year-old. Perhaps that’s where my nursing career started?

In 1967 I started my nursing training at Tauranga Hospital and was there for fi ve years. Now there are many stories I could tell about that time, some tragic and some funny; probably one of the safest ones was when we built a fl oat for the August 1969 Orange Festival Parade. The second part of the then New Hospital was being built and a group of us convinced the construction fi rm to help us build this fl oat and provide the materials for it. Not sure that would happen today!

We had a great cross section of staff

involved: nurses, house surgeons, orderlies, stores men – it was a real hospital effort. We even had people with plaster casts on legs and arms in beds on the fl oat – had a few laughs making them in Outpatients the week before. What a fun day we all had being part of the parade.Back to the present day. On

Friday morning March 7 the Min-ister of Health Hon. Tony Ryall is unveiling a plaque to commemorate the Centennial of Tauranga Hospital. It is people that make a hospital, both the people who have worked there and the people who have used the services. In celebrating 100 years we are celebrating the numerous people who have been involved over those 100 years.

What ever your experience and story has been, on behalf of the Board I want to thank you for being part of the history of Tauranga Hospital.

Sally Webb

Chair, Bay of Plenty District Health Board

This week marks 100 years for Tauranga Hospital. In collaboration with the

hospital, The Weekend Sun is marking the momentous occasion with a six-page spread offering an insight into the rich history that

has accumulated during the last century.Within these pages you will fi nd stories young and

old about some of the people, places and practices making up the hospital’s fi rst century.

Tauranga Hospital was offi cially opened on March 6, 1914, by the Inspector-General of Hospitals, Dr THA Valentine. The opening fell fi ve months out from the outbreak of World War 1.

From day one – the city’s need for a hospital was shown, with two patients admitted on March 6: Herbert Wood, aged 20, and his brother, Reginald, aged 16.

Both men were diagnosed with typhoid fever and together clocked up 111 days in hospital.

By 1950 Tauranga Hospital was considered a ‘cot-tage hospital’ and was located a distance from the town centre. Greerton was a Town Board and there was little housing beyond what is now 23rd Ave.

Bay of Plenty District Health Board CEO Phil Cammish says Tauranga Hospital is no longer a ‘cot-tage hospital’ by any means.

Today the hospital provides medical, surgical, pae-diatrics, obstetrics, gynaecology and mental health services to Western Bay of Plenty residents and beyond.

It is a base for a range of associated clinical sup-port services and allied health, such as rehabilitation, speech therapy, physiotherapy, stroke and cardiac support, district nursing, and drug and alcohol programmes.

There are 349 beds at Tauranga Hospital, including the Special Care Baby Unit, maternity and mental health. Of these, 224 are available for medical and surgical patients, with 58 more for children and elderly, and 17 for medical day stay.

Mental health patients have 34 designated beds – 10 for older patients – and there are 43 beds for maternity, including 12 for the special care baby unit.

In 2007, the Bay of Plenty Clinical School was set up to provide our health workforce with clinical training, facilities, resources and support for clinical trials and research projects.

“Today we have a modern hospital that in no way

Paul Mountfort arrived at Tauranga Hospital on December 28, 1949. He was a young

doctor in his early 20s. He tells us about his arrival, what the building was like, and how

the organisation ran at the time.“Hello Mountfort! Nice to see you. I’ve been on-call

continuously for 35 days, and now I’m going on holiday.”

In saying so, Dr Sligo handed me a bunch of keys and said: “I’ll see you in a fortnight”.

Tauranga Hospital was a single-storied rough cast building with a tiled roof. From the outside it was quite attractive.

There was a tennis court in front, with a drive for cars separating it from the Boiler House with a tall chimney.

Entering the hospitalThe entrance led to a short corridor, from which

there was a small receptionist’s offi ce, with a switch-board, the superintendent’s offi ce, the dispensary and a public waiting room.

At the end was a larger corridor at right angles, which gave access to two wards, the theatre, the X-ray room, the matron’s offi ce and the kitchen.

The two wards were identical; each was a large hall with a divider across the middle. There were two side rooms, a ward sister’s offi ce, a sterilising room and to one side, a sluice room and toilets.

Around two sides was a glassed-in veranda for chil-dren and convalescents. One ward was for females and the other for males.

The patients were aligned along the walls – and if necessary, down the centre too. The fi rst half was for acutely ill patients and the second half for elderly permanent cases.

There was a third ward, made of wood, which had about a dozen single rooms used for chronically ill tuberculosis patients.

It was on a small rise, not far from the main block.There were a number of small wooden huts dotted

about, for the carpenters, the painters, the laboratory, a surgical boot-maker and one was used by a chronic paraplegic called ‘Scotty Savage’, who went out there in his wheelchair and made ‘home brew’.

There were two full-time medical staff, the Superin-tendent, Dr Sligo and a house surgeon, and me.

There were also two part-time surgeons, Dr Mark

and Dr Park, who did the two lists each week and attended to the acute cases.

They worked week and week about. The local gen-eral practitioners attended to the obstetric cases in the Maternity Annex, which was nearby.

There was no physician, no radiologist and no pathologist.

There were some visiting specialists, including a tuberculosis offi cer from Hamilton and later from Rotorua.

He did a clinic every fortnight, seeing numerous patients collected by the district nurses.

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.

A simple x-rayThe 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 stud-ies of the stomach and bowel.

There was also a very fi ne Westinghouse portable, which the medical staff could use when the radiogra-pher was not available.

There was a radiographer, but no radiologist, so the doctors had to report based on the patients’ fi lms.

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.

Jobs done wellIn spite of all the problems, two areas of the hospital

functioned very well. The fi rst 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.

As Minister of Health, MP for Bay of Plenty, and as a local Bay of Plenty resident, it is a privilege to play a part in the Tauranga

Hospital’s 100th Anniversary.Tauranga Hospital has a proud history of providing

excellent healthcare to generations of Bay of Plenty families.

It was offi cially opened on March 6, 1914, by the Inspector-General of Hospitals, Dr T.H.A Valentine.

The opening coincided with the year of fi rst motor vehicle accident recorded in Tauranga – 11 years after the fi rst sighting of a car in the town.

Originally, the hospital had six beds, and the average length of stay was 17 days. It was run by four staff who lived on-site, at a cost of the equivalent of $17,511 per year.

During the last 100 years, the hospital has undergone a remark-able transformation. It now covers 58,000

square metres and employs 2300 staff. The average bed occupancy today is 307, the average

length of stay is four days; and it now costs $250 mil-lion a year to run.

The hospital has the distinction of being the fi rst in the country to have all of its 10 inpatient wards com-plete the Releasing Time To Care Programme.

This programme aims to free up nurses’ time, which they can then spend one-on-one with patients, greatly improving quality of care.

I also visited the hospital’s acute Stroke Unit, which opened in January 2013 and has been performing above national benchmarks for patient treatment.

By working closely with ambulance, emergency department and radiology services, the hospital has reduced or removed many of the barriers preventing stroke patients to get the treatment they need.

I’m grateful for the opportunity to share in this signifi -cant milestone in the hospital’s rich history, and I look forward to many more milestones to come.

• In 1914, if you broke your shin bone you’d be in hospital for at least six weeks, in plas-ter for three months, and require at least six months off work. Today, the average time off work is six to 12 weeks.

• The number of joint replacements required worldwide is increasing. In 2000, the Bay of Plenty District Health Board recorded 155 hip replacements and 110 knee replacements. In 2013, this increased to 391 hips and 333 knees.

• In 1914, parents were discouraged from visiting their sick child in hospital. Today, parents can stay at the hospital and are encouraged to be a part of the decision-making process.

• On February 24, 1944, the fi rst was baby born in the old Maternity Annexe. His name was Norman Leslie; and to celebrate his birth, Tauranga Hospital gave the mother fi ve pounds.

• Throughout its early years, Tauranga Hospital’s staff maintained a small farm near the premises. Farming operations were ended in July 1935.

• In 1914, doctors were unable to see inside the human body. Today, Tauranga Hos-pital’s Radiology Department includes equipment that allows doctors to see inside the body through the use of x-rays, ultra-sounds, MRI scans and CT scans.

• At the time Tauranga Hospital opened, nurses were typically young, single and untrained. They predominantly made beds, and fed and washed patients. Today, nurses are highly trained, often specialised, and perform many tasks previously done by doctors.

Tauranga Hospital turns 100 years old

Recognising a century of dedication A surgeon’s arrival in 1949

could any longer be considered a ‘cottage hospital’, and a wonderfully dedicated staff practising innovative

and sometimes world-leading medicine for the people of the Bay of Plenty,” says Phil.

treat this disease today, and he had

long gone. I well remember being bored stiff while we were visiting him every day so I would amuse

involved: nurses, house surgeons, orderlies, stores men – it was a real hospital effort. We even had people with plaster casts on legs and arms in beds on the fl oat – had a few laughs making them in Outpatients the week before. What a fun day we all had being part of the parade.

Friday morning March 7 the Min-

Recognising a century of dedication

length of stay is four days; and it now costs $250 mil-lion a year to run.

the country to have all of its 10 inpatient wards com-plete the Releasing Time To Care Programme.

they can then spend one-on-one with patients, greatly improving quality of care.

opened in January 2013 and has been performing above national benchmarks for patient treatment.

department and radiology services, the hospital has reduced or removed many of the barriers preventing stroke patients to get the treatment they need.

Hospital’s 100 ‘a privilege’ to be a part of

Minister of Health Tony Ryall.

Doctors operate in Tauranga Hospital’s operating theatre in the early 1950s.

Arriving as a junior doctor – he spent his fi rst four years in Tauranga before travelling to England in 1953, training for four years to become a surgeon.

“I was just an ordinary young doctor when I started, and I came back as what they called a senior regis-trar,” says the now retired senior surgeon.

For Paul, the difference in the surgical industry between when he worked, and now, is incompatible.

“There is almost no similarity really, except the actual operating. The instruments they have today

are so much better, the diagnostic equipment they have is so much better.

“We didn’t have any scans of any sort, we had x-rays. When I started we didn’t even have a

laboratory set.”The most complicated instrument Paul used in his

early years as a surgeon was a diathermy – an electric knife used to coagulate tissue.

“The instruments we had were simple instruments by today’s standards. There were no cat scans, no ultrasounds or MRI scans.”

Without such equipment, surgeons were expected to accurately diagnose patients using

little more than their eyes and ears.“The surgeon making the diagnosis had to be a jolly

site cleverer. In these days it’s much easier to diagnose, now there are all sorts of strange tests.”

Paul says the process of introducing technology enabling easier diagnosis, began when Dr Paul Wishart started a radiology unit at Tauranga Hospital In 1951.

As time went on, more modern technology was incorporated into the hospital – changes Paul says were “very easy” to adjust to.

“It was very nice, and welcomed. It’s like driving a car and having no road signs. They put the signs up – and it’s good.”

Through his career at Tauranga Hospital many big events occurred – though Paul says many of the memories that last are bad ones.

“Though there were some great things that hap-pened. Things that stand out in my mind is a girl who got kicked in the head by a horse, and someone else came in with a bullet in their lung and we managed to get that out.

“The most rewarding thing in a way was setting frac-tures, because they were young fi t people; and when they got better, they got completely better.”

Dr Paul Mountford retired in June, 1991.

Arriving as a junior doctor – he spent his fi rst four years in Tauranga before travelling to England in 1953, training for four years to become a surgeon.

“I was just an ordinary young doctor when I started, and I came back as what they called a senior regis-trar,” says the now retired senior surgeon.

For Paul, the difference in the surgical industry between when he worked, and now, is incompatible.

are so much better, the diagnostic equipment they have is so much better.

“We didn’t have any scans of any sort, we had x-rays. When I started we didn’t even have a

laboratory set.”The most complicated instrument Paul used in his

early years as a surgeon was a diathermy – an electric knife used to coagulate tissue.

“The instruments we had were simple instruments by today’s standards. There were no cat scans, no ultrasounds or MRI scans.”

Without such equipment, surgeons were expected to

Dr Paul Mountfort worked at Tauranga Hospital from 1949 to 1991.

Witnessing development of surgery

Dr Paul Mountfort with an iron lung which he used during the 1950s. Photo by Tracy Hardy.

By Corrie Taylor

Did you know...?

A surgeon’s arrival in 1949

continuously for 35 days, and now I’m going on holiday.”

and said: “I’ll see you in a fortnight”.

building with a tiled roof. From the outside it was quite attractive.

cars separating it from the Boiler House with a tall chimney.

Entering the hospital

By Corrie Taylor

Pictured: Numerous old surgical equipment currently on display at

Tauranga Hospital.By Tony Ryall

29The Weekend Sun28 The Weekend Sun

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When Roie Kingan began training to become a nurse in

1954 there were five women in her preliminary class.

Under Sister Natalie Banner, the group graduated in 1958 – none of them mar-ried and all of them were living in the nurses’ home.

“In the early 1950s you trained in gen-eral nursing; there were no specialties as such, 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.”

Roie recalls living in the nurses’ home as an “amazing experience” filled with social occasions.

“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 12am or 1am trying to evade Sister Bakewell, or whoever was on that night.”

Roie says the nurses became very close friends, living and working together every day.

“I mean really it; 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.”

At that time, nurses normally worked in one ward for six weeks, then moved to another. “On night duty there

was one nurse on in each ward, an after-noon supervisor and there was a nurse that was called a runner; and she went from one ward to another as required, helping.

“Ward 3 was the TB Ward and that was right up the hill and Ward 6, which was the geriatric or old people’s ward, was also right across, quite an area away, and some of the girls didn’t like going up there at night either, as they were a bit scared.”

Roie says nurses then were probably much closer to the doctors and house surgeons.

“Now a huge amount of work goes through Accident and Emergency, but in my time our patients nearly always went straight to the ward.

“Bad accidents and things like that went straight to wards; therefore you had to be much closer to doctors and so on, because they relied on you so much.”

A typical work day began at 6am, washing sheets and making beds. Patients had breakfast at 7.30am, and from then on duties consisted of treat-ments and other jobs.

Visiting hours were 2pm-3pm and 7pm-8pm. Roie says there were always funny instances. “One time I was on night duty in Ward 3, the TB Ward, and I was told to watch out as some of the ladies were going into the Men’s Ward.

“The other thing was I was supposed to be watching out for, was any beer going into the Men’s Ward.”

While she loved her job, Roie says today’s nurses are doing more and more.

“They can put in a drip these days and we weren’t allowed to. The technology has changed; we had very little technol-ogy.

“We would set up for our senior nurse to do all her dressings. She had to steri-lise all of the equipment and things in a little steriliser and set up her own trays.

“Nowadays, they come in packages and you just pick up what package you want and so on.”

“What we had available was much more basic compared to today.”

It is estimated more than one million people in the

world can see today because of initiatives introduced by

the late professor Fred Hollows.

But many people don’t know it was during his four years spent at Tauranga Hospital that Fred made his first significant move towards becoming an eye doctor.

Born in April 1929, Fred worked at Tauranga Hospital from 1958-1959, under the assistance of eye surgeon DR R.E Tingey, who let Fred assist with operations.

Fred completed an ‘eye term’ as part of his initial medical training, and within a year at Tauranga Hospital learned how to safely remove a cataract.

Following this, Fred took a position at Wellington Hospital as an Ophthalmologic Registrar. In 1961 he went to Moorfields Eye Hospital in England to study Ophthalmology. He then did postgraduate work in Wales and

the United Kingdom, before moving to Australia in 1965.

Fred went on to become an internationally-acclaimed eye surgeon and social justice activist, who championed the right of all people to access high quality and affordable eye care.

The Fred Hollows Founda-tion was set up in 1992, and carries on Fred’s work in 30 developing countries across Asia, Africa and the Pacific.

The work of the foundation restores sight to the needlessly blind, and trains local eye health specialists to provide eye care services in their own communities. In the last five years alone, the foundation has performed nearly one mil-lion sight-restoring operations and treatments, and trained more than 38,000 local eye health specialists.

Fred died in 1993 in Sydney, Australia, at the age of 63 years.

New Zealand’s worst disease disaster to date is the influenza pandemic

that struck during October to December in 1918.

No event has killed so many New Zea-landers in such a short space of time.

While World War 1 claimed the lives of more than 18,000 New Zealand soldiers during a four-year period, the second wave of the 1918 influenza epidemic killed almost 8600 people in less than two months.

No other recorded influenza pandemic has been so deadly; and to this date nobody knows why it was so deadly.

The 1918 influenza pandemic was commonly referred to as the Spanish Flu, though it didn’t originate in Spain.

It was given the name by journalists when the Spanish King, Alfonso X111, fell seri-ously ill with a form of influenza in May that year.

1918 influenzaThe Tauranga district did not suffer as

much from the 1918 epidemic as other areas.

The Bay of Plenty Hospital Board meeting of November 8, 1918, was held just as the violent influenza epidemic was reaching its peak. Yet the only mention of the epidemic in the meeting’s notes was: ‘Leave of absence was granted Messrs Spence and Green, who were detained in Auckland by the prevailing epidemic’.

The death rate of the epidemic was highest in young, healthy males – the group which had suffered most in the war.

By the board’s next meeting in December, the epidemic was start-ing to diminish.

In Tauranga County (popula-tion 2942), there were 12 deaths recorded, and six in Tauranga Borough (population 1685). This was a combined mortality rate of 3.9 per 1000.

In contrast, Whakatane’s mor-tality rate was 12.5.

What the doctor saysBay of Plenty Medical Officer

of Health Dr Phil Shoemack says influenza is potentially serious to each individual.

“It’s huge. But because so many people get it each year, the overall burden is difficult to calculate.

“Every year a number of people die from influenza,

but those who are most susceptible to that are often people who are already unwell, suffering other conditions.”

Phil says influenza is a viral illness, and therefore cannot be cured.

“You can take medication to ease the pain, but there is no treatment for it and noth-ing that will actually get you back to work faster.”

It often renders people sick in bed, unable to carry on their daily life, and takes about a week to get back to normal, says Phil.

Fighting influenza todayA significant step in fighting influenza

came in 2000 with the Ministry of Health’s announcement it would fully fund the flu vaccine for a number of people.

Bay of Plenty Medical Officer of Health Dr Phil Shoemack says the decision to make it free and the active promotion of the vaccine has made a difference in fighting influenza.

“The target was set to have 70 per cent of the over-65 populations vaccinated annu-ally, and most years we reach that now.”

The vaccine is currently free to residents aged over 65 years old, and to those with chronic medical conditions.

“A large number of employers now also fully fund the vaccine for their employees, so that’s a massive benefit to them, their families and to the productivity of the country,” says Phil.

James Lynch lay in a bed in Tauranga Hospital for more

than 40 years.Paralysed at age 14, James

was admitted to Tauranga Hospital in 1957, and to this day carries the record for the hospital’s longest-staying permanent patient.

Retired registered nurse Stella Ward was one of many staff who looked after James and says his sense of humour, strong Catholic faith, positive attitude and sharp mind were inspira-tional.

“One day when I was washing him, he surprised me when he said out of the blue: ‘I've had such a good life’,” says Stella.

“I was stunned for a minute. ‘Do you think so James, with all that’s happened?’ I asked him. ‘Well I’ve never had any pain and I’ve never been bored. I’ve had such a good life,’ he replied.”

James was paralysed when taking an on-board visit of the HMS Veronica, as he tried to help a sailor who was holding a live wire. The current passed through James, paralysing him and during the following years his body slowly deteriorated.

In recalling his sharp mind, Stella says James used to celebrate his birthday each year in November.

“One day he’d been thinking and said: ‘I’m sure my mother didn’t die in the 1918 influenza epidemic, but in 1919’, and he wanted to get a copy of his

birth certificate. “So we got in

touch with the local registry office but couldn’t find any record of his birth, and that really upset him.

We were told that some people weren’t regis-tered at birth but when they went to school, so we applied to his old school, Tauranga District School, and we found his entry in the archives.”

When James was six years old, his grandfather had enrolled him; and Stella

discovered his birthday was in fact August 20, 1918.

“I’ve been reading Scorpio [horoscopes] to you all these years and you’re a Leo,” she told him.

“A local lawyer applied for his birth certificate and that became one of his prized treasures.”

Stella used to take James to the movies and says he liked action and cowboy movies. “He used to get so excited he’d shake. If he had had a normal life, he would be an accountant he told me once. He’d lie there and count cars and trucks going past his window within 10 minutes, and how many in an hour. He was a lovely man.”

James Lynch died peacefully at Tauranga Hospital in May 2001.

Working for the hospital until 2000, the 87-year-old has seen a number of first in medical improvement such as the progress in radiology (CT and MRI scans), coronary and open heart surgery, organ and join replacements and other revolutionary discoveries.

“I graduated in 1949. That was near the beginning of the antibiotic era with Penicillin and then Streptomycin being the first antibiotics made widely available.

“The results in overcoming bacterial diseases like pneumonia and tuberculosis were miraculous. Unfortunately due to the emergence of bacterial resistance factors we are now loosing that miracle,” says Arthur.

Other advancements Arthur has seen change the face of medicine include the use of nuclear medicine, advances with drugs and radiology in all forms of cancer, and new vaccines for disease prevention like polio, rubella, hepatitis and mumps.

“All these wonderful developments in treatments we now regard as routine and meet out ordinary everyday expectations.

“Whole groups of highly qualified specialists have been trained to meet these expectations and do so now with ‘routine’ success. We all enjoy extended health and happiness as a consequence,” says Arthur.

Fighting influenza

Saving sight worldwide

Life as a nurse in the late 1950s

Did you know...Influenza spreads around the world in seasonal epidemics, resulting in three to five million annual cases of severe illness and 250,000-500,000 deaths each year. This rises to millions in some pandemic years.The first cases of the influenza virus strain H1N1

(swine flu), arrived in New Zealand on April 25, 2009. In the months that followed, the Ministry of

Health reported 3500 cases of swine flu infection.It was recorded as being responsible for 20 deaths, although more may have resulted from

infection.

What is influenza?• A virus transmitted through the air by coughs or sneezes.• Symptoms include chills, fever, runny nose,

sore throat, coughing, headache and muscular pain.• The real killer in 1918 was pneumonia – a

secondary infection.• The skin of some people who caught pneu-monia in 1918 darkened, because of burst blood vessels. If the whole body became virtually black, this often meant imminent death.

Above: Fred, working with young children overseas. Photo by

Michael Amendolia.

Professor Fred Hollows first learned to remove a cataract at Tauranga Hospital. Photo by Peter Solness.

Did you know...• The first matron at Tauranga Hospital was

Miss Gertrude Ellen Mason. She worked as

the matron from 1914-1920. It is believed she

married Crawford McCracken in 1925, and

died in 1962.• In March 1919, the Tauranga Hospital Com-

mittee reported the recommendation for a

nurses’ home to be built on-site, to make room

for more accommodation. In November 1920,

Miss Gertude Mason – the hospital’s first

matron – handed in her resignation, and the

position of a medical superintendent for the

hospital was created. This position would pay

$600 per year.

Retired registered nurse Roie Kingan now lives in Pongakawa.

Patient’s 40-year hospital stay Changes in medicineStella Ward,

with James Lynch in Tauranga

Hospital.

By Corrie Taylor

Pictured: Arthur Reid is now enjoying retirement with his wife, living

in Bethlehem.

Arthur Reid witnessed huge changes in medicine and treatment during the five decades he worked at Tauranga Hospital, as a

physician and deputy medical superintendent.

Nurses and young patients outside the old children’s

ward in early 1950s.

Nurses working in 1933.Photo by Jacquie Comley.

The Graduation Class of 1958.

By Corrie Taylor