NURSE’S DREAM COME TRUE

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXXVI, Issue 14570, 14 January 1948, Page 5

NURSE’S DREAM COME TRUE

ACQUIRED OWN HOSPITAL IN TE AWAMUTU

SERVICE WITH ARMY DURING

WAR

San Michele Hospital, Te Awamutu—a spacious, modern, wellappointed hospital, with little about it to remind one of service conditions and service life—is an Army nursing sister’s dream come true.

Often during her wartime service overseas Sister M. C. Macßae dreamed of the time when she might have a hospital of her own. San Michele, which she has acquired in partnership with Sister Kelly, is the realisation of that dream. There were endless problems to solve in the financing and equipping of such a venture, but with patient work and with the aid of the Rehabilitation Department the two sisters have at last established themselves and, with a staff of four nurses, now carry on the work they did before and during the war. San Michele contains many mementoes of the war. The operating trolley saw valiant service overseas before it was eventually disposed of by the War Assets Realisation Board. The operating table, which is one of the most modern design, also came from former Army stocks, and the huge, shadowless lamp suspended over it was one part of the tried and reliable equipment of the hospital ship Maunganui.

Providing accommodation for their staff was one of the many problems Sisters Macßae and Kelly had to face. Part of the accommodation has been provided by two array huts, though their present appearance and comfort. is something that was not dreamed of in the army.

Before the war Sister Macßae was sub-matron of a large South Island hospital. At the beginning of 1941 she left New Zealand for nearly four years, during which time she served with No. 3 N.Z.G.H., at Helmeih, Egypt, and with units in Syria, Tripolitania, and Italy.