At Lakes there was always enough and plenty of variety. You could eat what you wanted and leave the rest, writes John Ghent. Photo / 123rf
At Lakes there was always enough and plenty of variety. You could eat what you wanted and leave the rest, writes John Ghent. Photo / 123rf
Not your everyday travel review - correspondent John Ghent shares his view on his stay at Rotorua Hospital.
Big windows, fantastic food, beautiful women – and a fresh drama every week.
Three weeks in Rotorua Hospital – all it cost was five hours in surgery and three litresof blood.
Te Whatu Ora Lakes offers orthopaedic surgery (sawbones) for the central North Island with a tight team of women under Mary Duggan. I was transferred in after coming a cropper off my bike with a fractured femur.
The first surprise was the food – after fasting for surgery I was hungry and would have settled for mince and mashed potatoes. Instead the first meal was Baked Moroccan Chicken with couscous and salad, midday and evening were always cooked meals and never the same thing twice – basic ingredients, carefully prepared and served up with a sensual care for colour, texture and taste.
Traditional hospital food used to be like prison fare. The problem with hospital food is no one wants to be there. You are probably in pain and possibly scared or angry with good reason. Medication can affect your taste buds. Your usual home comfort food is only possible at home. At Lakes you get meals you would pay good money for in a restaurant in town. Was the dietitian a genius or had they found an immigrant chef?
And here’s a challenge for those metropolitan food critics who live the high life at other people’s expense. Check out the meals in other metropolitan hospitals and see if they match up to Lakes.
Take a restaurant meal in to a patient and make a secret swap. They eat the restaurant meal and you eat their hospital meal. Then give each an independent score. At Lakes I didn’t like the porridge – stiff and solid like something made from bandages and plaster in the cast clinic. But of course no one can like everything. At Lakes there was always enough and plenty of variety. You could eat what you wanted and leave the rest.
And yes – the women were beautiful but make no mistake – they were smart. Hospital staff have always had more women than men as nurses, physios, OTs and social workers. But now there are more women doctors and consultants – and maybe more male nurses. The Pacific cruise atmosphere at Lakes was reinforced by large numbers of immigrant workers from the Philippines and India alongside Pākehā, Māori and Pasifika. But the teamwork was smooth and seamless, most evident on afternoon and evening shifts.
This was the Bluefly shift because patient buzzers go off endlessly and nurses (dressed in blue these days) fly from one body to another. The problem seems to be traditional, hierarchical staffing schedules. Everything has to run smoothly for the day shift, while management and consultants are around. On the back shifts (the Bluefly shifts) it’s the devil take the hindmost. And that’s where the teamwork is essential. One solution might be to create an extra shift – say from midday to early evening – to spread the load.
And finally, there was drama – not just the normal television soap stuff. Nurses went on strike looking for more support and recognition from management, boards and Government ministers. And in my last week there, a patient admitted from prison blew his top at a woman visitor. The next day there were two burly guards in his room and a lean, tough prison nurse called Lena on the ward.
On my last day in Lakes, I realised the orthopaedic ward also did gynaecology. At least they didn’t make me pregnant.
