Dr Barbara Hochstein has been one of the longest-serving radiologists nationally. She has been recognised in the 2024 King's Birthday Honours for services to radiology and education. Photo / Supplied
Dr Barbara Hochstein has been one of the longest-serving radiologists nationally. She has been recognised in the 2024 King's Birthday Honours for services to radiology and education. Photo / Supplied
This year the Rotorua doctor has been appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to radiology and education.
“I’m incredibly touched and immediately would like to say that it’s an honour for me as an individual because I am very much a team player and everything I do tends to be part of a group.”
For most of her career, Hochstein has been involved in integrating practices and encouraging communication between departments to improve cancer treatment services in Rotorua.
As a radiologist, she was recognised for initiatives she established in 1992 encouraging surgeons, pathologists, oncologists, chemotherapy nurses, and practitioners to speak a common language when treating patients.
“We have to understand what the surgeon wants to know and we have to understand why certain things like margins and lymph nodes are important to the oncologist,” she said.
While those processes are well established now “that’s really where it started for me”.
Other hallmarks in her career are setting up mobile breast screening services in rural areas such as Te Kaha in 1999, and establishing Aratika Cancer Trust retreats in Taupō in 2010.
She is also proud of setting up conferences to detect the signs of family violence during pregnancy scans last year.
She said signs of family violence can be picked up just by listening to the dynamics between expecting parents during an ultrasound.
Signs could “be verbal because of what’s said in the room where your ears prick up and you think, ‘oh this is not a very healthy environment for this unborn child’,” she said.
The O&G Ultrasound Workshop 2023 was held at Novotel in Rotorua last September, it hosted the then Minister for the Prevention of Family Violence and Sexual Violence Marama Davidson, Dr Patrick Kelly the head of the Child Protection Centre at Te Puaruruhou and representatives for police and other medical professionals.
“I have no answer or solution, but I’m not prepared to just sit back and at least not acknowledge the elephant in the room,” she said.
Barbara Hochstein at her 2015 citizenship ceremony in Rotorua. Photo / Stephen Parker
Arriving in New Zealand from Germany with her parents aged 7, she couldn’t speak English, so she relied on body language and interpersonal communication to learn.
Now she’s focused on “handing down the baton” of knowledge, focusing on communication for training doctors in their final years. She said training the “next generation” for over 30 years, has shown her communication is key.
“Teaching is another very important thing for me because you only have achieved through learning from others. You can’t get it all out of books or podcasts.
“I often really work with the young doctors to say, the more you tell us, the more I can interpret the scan.”
Hochstein says her mantra is: “You don’t treat a picture, you treat a patient”.
When Hochstein calls the Rotorua Daily Post she has just landed in London and is recovering from jet lag. This weekend she began a temporary post there, to address a local resource issue here - access to radiologists at night.
The solution for her as a specialist is to be awake when hospitals in Australia and New Zealand need an expert to be available urgently after hours.
The role will cover Australian and New Zealand hospitals; the bulk of the work is expected to come from trauma hospitals in Melbourne, she says.
“Trauma involves a lot of car accidents.”
Hochstein also says stroke treatment has improved and having the ability to read a scan quickly will improve services for patients.
“It’s probably one of the most exciting true changes.”
“If you can scan very fast and see if the clot in the brain can be salvaged [it’s] called clot retrieval.”
Having recovered from a cancer diagnosis in 2018, Hochstein found painting an outlet.
“I painted my cancer cells [and found it] incredibly therapeutic because I sort of saw them and I kind of nuked them with my art because I wanted to get rid of them.”
She helped set up the Aratika Cancer Trust and is now a board member. She says her dream is to have a permanent base in Rotorua where patients can work in the garden.
“The vast majority of people nowadays are surviving their cancer so it isn’t a death sentence”.
She says allowing patients access to integrated healthcare solutions while they recover from cancer is a vital aspect of surviving cancer.
