In 1944 approval was given for tenders being called for the erection of the new nurses' home on the site of the existing Bega hospital.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The board objected to this, seeing the need of a hospital nearer to town. As a result, the Minister for Health directed inquiries to be made, and these resulted in the recommendation of a new site for the nurses' home and subsequently a new hospital.
The construction of the nurses' home began in 1945 and was completed and occupied in 1946. However, the shortage of staff necessitated their frequent conveyance by taxi to and from the hospital many times each day and at considerable expense.
This was seen as justified because the staff could not be allowed to live a moment longer than was absolutely necessary under the deplorable conditions at the old home with three nurses using one bedroom and staying on verandahs.
The board also sought advice from the Health Commission in 1945 as the best and cheapest way to convert some public wards into intermediate wards to assist hospital finances.
Jack Graham recalls the hospital as "being divided into male and female ends with a big room with a tiled floor as the original operating theatre. This was then moved to a galvanised iron building out the back."
"Another little building was the morgue. There was a free-standing building that was the isolation ward for infectious diseases.
"An iron lung used to stand in the end room. It was a massive box arrangement. Many young people got polio then, and were very badly affected by it. It could be pretty rugged being in hospital, even if you weren't very ill.
"At night in the big wards there would be people dying, people recovering from anaesthetics - they were all in together. The staff were great believers in fresh air, all the windows would be open sky high.
"There'd be one bed over near a window, and if someone was about to pass away they'd be put in that bed. It was the only bed with any privacy, it could have screens put around it. The screens would be put out, the window opened right up, and when the person died they'd be taken out through the window by the wardsmen.
"There weren't any small rooms, there might just have been a private room for women and one for the men."
Problems with the lack of domestic staff were highlighted in a Bega District News report of the board meeting in November 1945.
"There had been a shortage for some time with the result that the nursing staff has to do such work, and that interferes with their nursing duties. That they have risen to the occasion is all to their credit, but they should not have to do so.
"A relieving cook for at least one day a week is urgently needed, and one pound a day is being offered, but so far without result."