Founded in 1921, Royston Hospital in Hastings celebrates its centenary this year. Photo / Warren Buckland
Founded in 1921, Royston Hospital in Hastings celebrates its centenary this year. Photo / Warren Buckland
For its original founders, Royston Hospital in Hastings would be almost unrecognisable with new treatments and revolutionary technology.
That pioneering spirit endures though as the hospital prepares for its centenary and the opening of a new day surgery centre on the campus.
The hospital was founded by a small groupof locals in 1921 in a two-storey home on the corner of Avenue Rd and King St, with a small surgical centre downstairs and a 10-bed ward upstairs.
While there was a public hospital in Napier, it wasn't until 1928 that one was built in Hastings.
Then: The original Royston Hospital on the corner of Avenue Rd and King St, Hastings, was badly damaged in the 1931 earthquake. Photo / Knowledge Bank
With limited transportation options, it would have been life and death at times for those who needed acute care, general manager Denise Primrose said.
"The doctors needed to be a jack of all trades."
She also found it hard to imagine how they would have coped without lifts, adding staff became adept at transporting patients from the theatre to the wards above.
Many of the doctors and nurses would have served during World War I and been tasked with responding to the 1918 Influenza pandemic.
"I don't know if you become used to working in difficult times in health care but it would have stood them in good stead for the 1931 earthquake. Hawke's Bay really was brought to its knees."
Today: Royston Hospital remains on the corner of Southland Rd and Prospect Rd, Hastings, in the original Harris family homestead. Photo / Warren Buckland
While the recently opened Hastings Hospital was largely undamaged, it couldn't cope with the volume of people who needed emergency care, she said.
Royston Hospital was similarly overrun with 100 people stretched out on the front lawn in the first half-hour of the devastating quake which killed 247 people.
It was deemed unsafe, however, with existing and newly triaged patients sent to a field hospital set up at the Hastings racecourse, "MASH (Mobile Army Surgical Hospital) style".
"That is where the resourcefulness came in again," Primrose said.
"They set up an operating theatre under canvas. It was really intrepid stuff."
The hospital then moved into the former Harris family homestead just across the road on the corner of Southland and Prospect Rds which formed the current base of Royston Hospital today.
Royston Hospital general manager Denise Primrose said it was a privilege to lead the hospital as it marked its centenary. Photo / Warren Buckland
Royston Hospital later merged with Wakefield Health Limited, part of the Acurity Health Group of hospitals including Wakefield and Bowen Hospitals in Wellington, in 2006.
In 2015 the group was acquired by Evolution Healthcare, a private Australian and New Zealand operated healthcare provider.
It currently has 33 inpatient beds, five operating theatres and an endoscopy suite, with plans to open two new theatres in the New Year along with an expanded campus
The campus expansion will include a soon to open a purpose-built orthopaedic day surgery unit.
Primrose said the hospital today would be "unrecognisable" to its founders, given changes in surgical and anaesthetic care.
"The advances have just been phenomenal.
"I think [the original doctors] would think they are looking at something from the space age.
Royston Hospital would be "unrecognisable" to its founders says general manager Denise Primose, citing technological advances like the new Siemens 3T MRI scanner added this year. Photo / NZME
"Back in 1921 they were doing one operation a day because it took that long to thoroughly sanitise the theatre or sterilise the few instruments they had, [... those patients] they then would have been in hospital for two to three weeks after."
She said it was a "real privilege" to lead the team during such a milestone year recognising its "rich history".
While Covid-19 had derailed some of their plans to mark the occasion they had plans to celebrate in the New Year to coincide with the opening of Evolution's new day surgery centre in partnership with local orthopaedic surgeons.
She hoped to recognise the people who had worked so hard, many who had given a "considerable part of their working life" to the hospital - some more than 30 to 40 years of the hospital's 100 year history.
Celebration plans included an open day of the Royston campus, a reunion of the many staff who had worked there over the years and a display of replica uniforms from the different eras.
