Te Awamutu Medical Centre's long-serving couple doctors Richard and Mary Ballantyne are retiring. Photo / Dean Taylor
Te Awamutu Medical Centre's long-serving couple doctors Richard and Mary Ballantyne are retiring. Photo / Dean Taylor
Richard and Mary Ballantyne have been part of Te Awamutu’s community for so long that it is easy to assume they are Kiwi, but the fact is they came to New Zealand from England on a working holiday in the 1970s - and never left.
Last month they both officially retired, although there is still an interest in both the Te Awamutu Medical Centre practice and some of the clinics they have been so long associated with.
Richard and Mary were medical students at London University’s Guys Hospital Medical School in the mid-1970s when they met and fell in love.
By the time they were qualified doctors, they were a couple, both working in the stressful National Health Service.
Richard said the system was hierarchical and difficult to break into, so they made the choice to take a working holiday for a couple of years, travel the world, and come home with some experience under their belts.
At the end of 1976, they arrived in New Zealand, and on New Year’s Day 1977 Richard presented himself at Waikato Hospital to start his new job.
He said it took a while to find someone who knew what was going on, then they told him “nothing really happens here until January 15, so take a couple of weeks off and come back then”.
He did come back on the 15th and not long afterwards, when the hospital found out his wife was also a doctor, Mary was employed as an anaesthetist.
Two years soon passed, and the couple were still in New Zealand.
Richard said New Zealand was being good to them, and soon another opportunity arose, and their fate was sealed.
A group of Te Awamutu doctors from solo and small practices established the Medical Centre, the first of its type outside the biggest cities.
Te Awamutu Medical Centre in Vaile St. Photo / Dean Taylor
The plan was to pool resources, cover for each other when needed, offer a seven-days-per-week, 24-hour service and share the load to take pressure off the doctors.
There were seven partners at first, but they wanted eight to make their rostered leave system work, so Richard was invited to join.
He started in 1979. Then in 1981 a partner left and Mary took his place, working as a GP and anaesthetist after an addition was built to allow for minor surgery.
She trained in obstetrics at a time when general practitioners were involved in the delivery of their patients’ babies.
The clinic also added X-ray services, physiotherapy, and visiting specialist clinics to their services - it was a big change for the town.
One of the innovations was the walk-in casualty clinic, with duties covered by the roster.
The Ballantynes paid credit to the early doctors for the foresight to be ahead of the times when it came to medical care.
“We provided a great service for Te Awamutu,” they said.
Later Mahoe Medical followed that lead after buying the practice of long-serving GP Alison Marshall.
By now the Ballantynes had firmly set down their roots, starting a family and making a life in New Zealand.
Although all their family was in the United Kingdom, Richard said Britain was “like a foreign country to us”.
“We have made so many great friends in New Zealand, both Kiwis and other people from other countries, and the country has been good to us.”
A lot has changed in the decades since they joined the Medical Centre, which they put down to the extra demands on doctors, growth in patient lists, and the complications of ailments and pressure on hospitals, which means more cases are being referred back to GPs.
“We don’t attend births, after-hours care is contracted, and often it is hard to get an appointment with your own doctor,” said Mary.
“It is less personal, which means patients don’t always get continuity of care.”
The couple said the changes aren’t always optimal for patients, but medical professionals are doing their best with the resources available.
They said the centre’s nurse practitioners and physician assistants are taking less complicated cases to take the stress off doctors and they have a prescribing pharmacist who is making a huge difference, helping with chronic conditions.
One thing they do agree on is the value of professional development that comes from working in such a collaborative environment.
“There’s no chance of falling behind in medical thinking or practise when so many professionals are together,” said Mary.
Richard’s retirement is actually his second attempt to ‘slow down’.
He sold his partnership 10 years ago but agreed to help out when needed, and ended up working part-time.
Previously he took up an interest in industrial medicine, obtaining a postgraduate qualification in Occupational Medicine. He worked for Tahāroa Ironsands for 25 years.
He had also worked as a locum in other parts of New Zealand and came to appreciate the country even more.
This time he is retiring from medicine to engage in his hobbies, which include a love of landscape photography.
Medical Centre general manager Wayne Lim said Richard has an amazing depth of experience and is probably one of the hardest-working GPs he ever met.
“He remembers and values the ‘traditional’ GP model, where a good patient-doctor relationship results in good continuity of care and the delivery of generational medicine to families,” said Lim.
Mary is continuing her Women’s Clinic covering a range of women’s health issues but specialising in menopause.
She also mentors Michaela Buhrs, the wife of Medical Centre doctor Ernst. She is a midwife and nurse who is training to be a nurse practitioner and helps Mary with her clinics.
“My interest is women’s health and I think I have a lot to offer,” said Mary.
In 2008 she joined the Australasian Menopause Society and started working in the field, well before it was given the recognition it deserved.
In 2018 she was awarded a Queen’s Service medal in the Birthday Honours for services to women’s and children’s health.
Mary retains a shareholding in the Medical Centre building and is a shareholder and director of the business.
Lim said she is a highly valued leader at work, at church, and in the community
“She is an ideas person with a keen focus on what’s needed in the community,” he said.
“She is always thinking of new ways to help others by improving how we do things, or by developing new services.
“Even when her retirement was approaching she was still coming up with new suggestions every week for how we could make things better for our patients.“
As a member of the Rotary Club of Kihikihi, she was the instigator of the Kihikihi School Clinic, Kihikihi Community Health Hub, and the weekly Thursday morning Community Clinic.
Retirement together will mean more time to enjoy their beach property and more time to visit their many friends and their children and their families around New Zealand.
“We love overseas travel as well,” said Mary, “but we are also keen to enjoy our own countryside more, tramping and riding our e-bikes.”
With about 90 years of combined service to medicine, it will be a retirement well deserved.
