Long Service Will End With Casualty Ward

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30399, 25 March 1964, Page 2

Long Service Will End With Casualty Ward

A long tradition of help in cases of sickness and emergency will end in Lyttelton next Tuesday when the doors of the old casualty ward there will close for the last time. The Hospital Board has decided that, with the direct access to Christchurch now offered by the Road Tunnel, it is no longer necessary.

“The general impression in Lyttelton is that it is quite a tragedy to lose the ward,” Mrs V. R. Williams, who has been in charge of it for 15 and a half years, said yesterday.

A registered psychiatric nurse, Mrs Williams is a member of the St. John Ambulance nursing division in Lyttelton.

"People have had a sense of security, knowing that there has been a service available to them here if they needed it It will be a real loss to them,” she said. One of the most important functions of the casualty ward, which includes a surgery and three beds was to treat shock until medical help arrived, especially burns, or to stop serious bleeding. “Its knowing what to do quickly that counts,” Mr Williams said. Humour, Tragedy Since she and her family have lived in the house attached to the ward, Mrs Williams has never known what she might find on her doorstep when the door-bell has rung. Sometimes there has been humour, other times, tragedy. “When that bell rings. I’m the nurse,” she said. Her fisherman husband got used to taking over whatever she was doing, especially when their children were young, whenever, a call to the ward came. Patients she has dealt with have ranged from those who had fishhooks stuck in their fingers to motor-accident victims. Once a child came in with a dart embedded in her forehead. Case Books Volumes of neatly-kept case books preserve a record of

the value the surgery and ward has been, not only to residents of Lyttelton, but also summer visitors to port and beaches who have met misfortune, and sick and convalessing seamen from many parts of the world. Some seamen from foreign ships have awaited fitness to return to sea, and their repatriation, in the three-bed ward. Many have had little, if any English, but the homliness they found overcame language barriers. More than once Mrs Williams has had a group of young seamen, far from their own homes, round her own fireside for tea and toast, or a game of cards. A Nickname She had an idea that a nickname she was known by was “Ma Williams what helps sailors,” she said with a smile. Letters she gets from overseas are sometimes from former patients, and sometimes from parents of young seamen who are grateful for the care and friendliness their sons have received from her. Local children have got used to coming in of their own accord after a mishap, to ask Mrs Williams to help them. It might be a hook in a finger, a foot caught in a bicycle pedal. Boys’ Bouquet

One of her nicest experiences was a diminutive former patient who returned one day bearing a large bunch of flowers he had bought for her with his own pocket money. Before the opening of the industrial clinic on the waterfront, all the injuries from the dockside also came to the ward: crushed and broken limbs, hands torn by wire and burned by rope, lacerations, fractures.

There had been a casualty ward in Lyttelton for at least 75 years, Mrs Williams said. The present building was formerly a cottage hospital in the community, before a maternity home was built Pet Aversion If there is one thing Mrs Williams has learned in her years as nurse at a casualty ward—apart from how to deal with a baby who swallowed a huge dose of pep pills, and dozens of other emergencies —it is to hate motor-cycles. “All motor-bikes should be at the bottom of the sea,” she said with a vehemence at odds with her normal, kindly personality. She has seen too many results of accidents with the machines. “Sometimes when they come in after an accident with a motor-bike, you wonder where you will start. It might take an hour to clean up a bad case,” she said. Home To Go Now that the casualty ward is closing, Mrs Williams is undecided as to the future.

Her present home, parts of which are almost 100 years old, and the casualty ward, are to be pulled down. If she does take up work again elsewhere it will probably be something in a similar field. For her enjoyment is in meeting people, and her talent is helping those in trouble.