St Vincent’s Hospital Medical Alumni AssociationE-Newsletter winter 2014

Welcome to the winter 2014 newsletter of your association.

In this edition – in brief

Membership – please read

From the Association’s existing records…………………………………………………………read more

Annual General Meeting

The Annual General Meeting of the Association was held on………………….….. read more

The 2014 Association Annual Golf Day

Forty-five members participated in the 2014 golf day……................................read more

Historical Talk and Cocktail Party

Professor Mark Cook gave a thoroughly researched………...............................read more

St Vincents’ Medical Alumni honoured

In the Australia Day and Queen’s Birthday announcements…………………….…..read more

Obituaries

Mr Roy Fink……………………………………………………………….………..……………………….read more

Mr Daryl Nye……………………………………………………………….…….…………………………read more

Dr Laurie Mashford……………………………….…………………………………………….……….read more

Association website –reminder

Our new website was launched in October 2013……………………………………………………..read more

From the Archives Department – 50 years ago

The life of an intern in the mid-1960s

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Prior to the arrival of the new Medical Practitioners Act in 1970…………..............read more

News from St Vincent’s Hospital .................................................................read more

News from the St Vincent’s Foundation......................................................read more

Membership – please read

From the association’s existing records and with the help of the foundation, we now have a membership list of over 2000 alumni. But, we only have email addresses for around 900 of those. Thus there is about a one in two chance that a fellow alumnus that you know well is not receiving any information from the association. So please pass this email on to all such friends and let them know that membership is FREE and that to give their email address to be on the mailing list, all that they need to do is to go to our website at http://stvincentsmedicalalumni.org.au/ and click on “JOIN”.

Annual General Meeting

The annual general meeting of the association was held on Monday, February 24, 2014. At the meeting the following office bearers were elected for the next twelve months:

President: Dr Kerry Breen

Secretary/Treasurer: Dr Michael Davies

Committee: Dr Jill Spargo, Dr Brendan de Morton, Dr David Olive and Mr Frank Incani. Mr Simon Banting, Chairman of the Senior Medical Staff, will be an ex-officio member.

The 2014 Association Annual Golf Day

Forty-five members participated in the 2014 golf day in perfect weather at Green Acres Golf Club in Kew. The winner of the individual event with 45 stableford points was Ray Crowe. Ray will hold the 70 year old silver O’Sullivan-Doyle Cup for the next twelve months. Runner up was Ross Elliot with 42 points and third was Phillip Davis with 39 points.

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Individual winner and cup holder Ray Crowe

Nearest the pin prizes went to Michael Westmore and Grant Flanagan, and the longest drive prize went to Ron Scholes. There was also a team event, based on the best two scores on each hole, and the winning team with 95 points was made up of Michael Yii, Nim Nadarajah, Phillip Davis and Allen Burton (Allen is from St Vincent's Private Radiology, one of the sponsors of the event).

Thanks to the management and staff of Green Acres who looked after the group so well. Thanks to our generous sponsors: St Vincent's Pathology, St Vincent's Private Radiology, Zouki Catering and Doquile Perrett Meade Financial Services. Thanks also to convenor of the Alumni Association Golf Day, David Olive, for a superb day.

NB The 2015 golf day will be held on Friday 27th March at Green Acres.

St Vincents’ Medical Alumni honoured

In the Australia Day and Queen’s Birthday announcements for 2014, several of our alumni were honoured. Recipients included:

Sir Marc Feldman AC, for eminent service to medicine and to public health as an acclaimed researcher in the field of chronic immune disease, and through the development of innovative treatment therapies.

Dr Jonathan Burdon AM, for significant service to respiratory medicine as a clinician and researcher, particularly occupational asthma, and to medical administration.

Dr James King OAM, for service to medicine, particularly in the field of perinatal epidemiology.

Dr Andrew Pattison OAM, for service to medicine as a general practitioner.

Historical Talk and Cocktail Party

Professor Mark Cook gave a thoroughly researched and entertaining talk on the history of neurology at St Vincent’s on Sunday 27 July 2014 to a small but very appreciative audience. Members and their guests then enjoyed catching up with old friends and colleagues at the cocktail party that followed.

The topic for the 2015 historical talk is yet to be decided. When the details are available they will be posted on the Alumni Association website.

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Obituary: Mr Roy Lawrence Willis Fink, MBBS, FRACS, FRCS

27/4/1938-11/1/2014

Roy Lawrence Willis Fink was born in Ballarat on the 27th April 1938. His father was a high school headmaster and the family moved between various country towns, including Learmonth, Yea and Benalla, before moving to Ferntree Gully and subsequently Bentleigh. His early years were influenced by World War II, holidays with relatives in the Western District, the romance of the bush, general mischievousness and country football. He completed his schooling at Xavier College, where he excelled academically and competed at a high level in athletics and football, being identified at this time by the Prefect of Studies at Xavier College as the sort of person who would form the backbone of society. It was at Xavier’s May Time Fair that he met the girl with whom he would subsequently form an enduring and unbreakable bond, Jill Duncan. He barracked for Richmond in his early years, but was influenced by a Xaverian who played for Hawthorn and Roy commenced his lifelong attachment to the Hawthorn Football Club in the lean years of the 1950s.

Roy matriculated with honours and was awarded a Commonwealth Scholarship to study at university. Encouraged by his family’s general practitioner, he commenced studying Medicine at the University of Melbourne in 1956. He focused on his studies, but also found time to develop his relationship with Jill, firm and long-term friendships with a number of fellow medical students, play amateur football for St Paul’s Bentleigh CYMS and work as a labourer for the Public Works Department during university holidays. He described as a “natural choice” the decision to undertake the clinical years of his medical degree at St Vincent’s Hospital Clinical School in view of his sense of duty to the Catholic Church and the fact that most of his friends chose to go there. This was the start of an association with St Vincent’s Hospital that would last for 53 years. He felt a strong sense of allegiance to St Vincent’s Hospital throughout his career and afterwards.

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Roy graduated in 1961 and was a Resident at St Vincent’s in 1962 and 1963. He likened this to a period of imprisonment alleviated by parties that included games, including one that involved attempting to fit as many people as possible on the mantelpiece in the residents’ quarters. He was a noted mimic, imitating St Vincent’s Hospital consultants, including John Horan. In 1964, he was an anatomy demonstrator at Melbourne University in 1964. He chose a career in surgery, was a Surgical Registrar at the Heidelberg Repatriation Hospital in 1965 and at St Vincent’s Hospital in 1966, working for his “surgical hero”, Jim McCoy. He was awarded the Fellowship of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons in 1967. Roy and Jill were married in 1963 and their children, Michael, Kathryn and Liza were born in 1964, 1966 and 1969, respectively.

Roy rounded out his surgical training in England, working from 1967 to 1969 at the Lambeth Hospital, Nottingham General Hospital and St Mark’s Hospital. It was at the latter that he developed his interest in colorectal surgery. He was awarded the Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons (England) in 1967. This was a stimulating period of career development, but also included frequent family trips in the countryside of the British Isles in a tiny caravan.

In 1970, the family returned to Melbourne and Roy renewed his association with St Vincent’s Hospital, being appointed Casualty Surgeon and Honorary Outpatients Assistant, and opened a private practice at 20 Collins Street, which he moved to 55 Victoria Parade, Fitzroy in 1979. He was a Consultant Surgeon in the Connell Unit and Hurley Unit, before joining the Ryan Colorectal Unit. In 1986, he moved to the Vellar Unit and rejoined the Colorectal Unit in 1989. He was the Director of the Department of Colon and Rectal Surgery from 1999 to 2003 and was a founding member of the Colorectal Surgical Society of Australia and New Zealand. His strong interest in teaching at an undergraduate and registrar level continued for much of his career and he was particularly renowned for his “lumps and bumps” teaching sessions. He was an examiner for the MBBS for 25 years and also examined for the RACS Clinical Examination. He pursued research in anorectal pathophysiology and colorectal clinical disorders. From 1974 to 1991 he held the position of Senior Lecturer in the University of Melbourne Department of Surgery and Associate Professor of the University of Melbourne, St Vincent’s Clinical School from 2000 to 2011.

Roy retired from private practice in 2003 and from his Consultant position at St Vincent’s Hospital in 2004. However, he retired gradually and continued roles with St Vincent’s Hospital in risk management and running a surgical clinic at Port Phillip Prison and was also a private surgical assistant, Senior Examiner for the Australian Medical Council and Medical Panel member for Workcover. He suffered from locally advanced, and subsequently metatstatic, adenocarcinoma of the pancreas over three years, though he bore his tribulations with courage and pragmatism. He passed away at St Vincent’s Private Hospital on the 11th January 2014.

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Roy will be remembered for his absolute dedication to his patients whom he treated equally no matter their walk in life, his unerring sense of responsibility, honesty, empathy, modesty and great humour.

Contributed by Dr Michael Fink. Michael is Roy's son and also a St Vincent's Alumnus. He is a hepato-biliary and hepatic transplant surgeon at the Austin Hospital.

Obituary: Mr Daryl Heath Nye MBBS, FRACS

3/11/1939- 9/12/2013

For the 25 years between 1974 and 1999, Daryl and I worked closely together in the Neurosurgical Unit at St Vincent’s Hospital Fitzroy and so I am well placed to record many aspects of his life and career.

Daryl’s primary and secondary education was at Wesley College from where he matriculated with honours in 1957. He graduated with the degrees of Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery from the University of Melbourne Medical School in 1963. After two years of residency at St Vincent’s Hospital he followed me as the neurosurgical registrar.

He spent the next two years in the Anatomy Department of the University of Melbourne as a demonstrator and researcher. During this time he passed the primary examination for the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons. His published research from that time includes three papers on the vascular anatomy of the human liver.

He began training in general surgery in 1969 but soon saw the light and in 1970 and 1971 he was again the neurosurgical registrar in Keith Henderson’s unit at St Vincent’s Hospital. In November 1971 he was admitted to Fellowship of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons.

For the next two years Daryl worked in England at the Manchester Royal Infirmary with Richard Johnson who was at the time a doyen in British neurosurgery. It was during this

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time that he began his lifetime interest in the management of intracranial aneurysms and benign tumours of the brain. I well remember his description of and excitement at the invention of CT scanner and other new technology available to him at Manchester. It would be four years before we had a CT scanner at St Vincent’s Hospital.

Daryl was appointed as a neurosurgeon to St Vincent’s Hospital in 1974 and he held that position until his retirement from the hospital in 2001 – a total overall of 32 years of service!

Particularly in the earlier years of his appointment, we were close colleagues and we shared much of our working hours side by side in the operating theatre or elsewhere in the hospital. Our operating days often lasted well into the night and it was a delight to then spend some rest time with him and swap stories and ideas – often over a gin and tonic.

Daryl was serious when needed but at times he was great fun. He did enjoy life. Ward parties and theatre Christmas parties spring to mind.

Daryl was very much a private person but as we spent so many special times together I became privy to much of his life outside medicine. I became aware of his devotion to his family and the high value he placed on his marriage and family life. Daryl married his best friend’s sister, Jan Sumner, in 1963 and they had three children, Anthony, Elisabeth and Michael and two grandchildren, Isabella and Alex.

Daryl would have fads from time to time but most of his interests lasted for years. In his youth there was long board surfing which gave way to a lifelong interest in boating and sailing. His love of fast cars was nurtured in the nearby garage of the racing ace of the time, Reg Hunt. Daryl never missed a grand prix. For a while he was a keen golfer. For years his riding helmet took pride of place at the centre of the rear window of his vehicle. He was enthusiastic about dressage, clay target shooting, fine cars, classical music, fine food and good wine, particularly Champagne.

Daryl was not a great traveller until recent years but when he did travel he travelled well. He is the only person I know to have flown in the Concorde.

He was a kind and caring doctor, particularly to his patients and to nursing and paramedical staff in the operating theatres and the wards. He never had a harsh word for anybody. In the operating theatre he was a quiet, courteous and competent surgeon who carefully practised the techniques he had learnt or developed. He was uncompromising in his routines and his attention to detail. He was a general neurosurgeon with sound surgical practice and skill.

During his years at St Vincent’s he also consulted in private practice and held consultant appointments at the Geelong Hospital, Box Hill Hospital, Heidelberg Repatriation Hospital and Werribee Mercy Hospital.

He presented papers on neurosurgical matters at scientific meetings of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, the Neurosurgical Society of Australasia and other learned

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societies. His publications are recorded in his curriculum vitae and include reports on clinical cases and among other topics studies on the intraoperative effects of diuretics and anaesthesia on the human brain.

Daryl served as a Member of the Court of Examiners of The Royal Australasian College of Surgeons from 1986 until 1997, inclusive and in the last three years he was the Chief Examiner in Neurosurgery. He had a reputation as a good and fair examiner.

Daryl had great respect admiration and gratitude for two persons in particular, Keith Henderson and Richard Johnson who together contributed most to his training in neurosurgery.

Daryl continued with his busy medico-legal practice until his unexpected death last December.

It will be some time before my memories of Daryl will fade.

Contributed by Dr Jim Cummins who was a member of the Neurosurgery Department at St Vincent's from 1971-1999 and was its Director from 1987 - 1999.

Obituary: Dr Laurie Mashford MBBS, FRACP, MSc.

20/8/1930 – 16/12/2013

Dr Laurie Mashford, who was the inaugural and long serving head of the Department of Clinical Pharmacology at St Vincent’s Hospital, died in December 2013 after an illness borne with remarkable stoicism. Laurie graduated MBBS (Hons) from the University of Sydney in 1952. His initial clinical training was at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney and subsequently as a medical registrar at the Royal Melbourne Hospital (RMH). He then worked as a research fellow in the University Department of Medicine at the RMH followed by research training in the emerging field of clinical pharmacology at Harvard Medical School and at Tufts University Medical School in Boston. On returning to Australia, he took an academic appointment at the University of Western Australia and then was appointed senior lecturer in the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology at the University of Adelaide. In 1969 he moved to the Department of Medicine at the Austin Hospital where he held the position of Reader in Applied Pharmacology until 1973. In the early 1970s, the federal government was keen to see the teaching of clinical pharmacology strengthened in all teaching hospitals and in 1974, Laurie was recruited to join the University Department of Medicine at St Vincent’s Hospital as Reader in Clinical Pharmacology.

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Initially based within the Department of Medicine and from 1987, as the full-time director of the newly formed hospital Department of Clinical Pharmacology, Laurie established a clinical service, an extensive range of drug assays, and a research laboratory, and led the teaching of clinical pharmacology. His departmental research interests at St Vincent’s included drug interactions, drug metabolism (in particular the effect of liver disease on drug clearance), the appropriate use of antibiotics and accurate and complete recording of adverse reactions to drugs. He was also instrumental in assisting Dr Bill Heath to establish the Hypertension Clinic.

Laurie had a wide range of professional and personal interests beyond his role at St Vincent’s. He played a very large part in the establishment of the series of publications of Therapeutic Guidelines and remained involved in this project throughout his career. He served on the Australian Drug Evaluation Committee of the TGA for 24 years and served the World Health Organisation in a number of consultative roles. He was deeply committed to the organisation International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. His personal passions included literature (especially Shakespeare), Latin, music, philosophy and poetry.On retiring from St Vincent’s in 1995, Laurie returned to an earlier alma mater, the Austin Hospital, where he served on the hospital’s Therapeutics Committee and the Human Research Ethics Committee, and chaired the Drug Trial Advisory Committee, as well as remaining active in teaching. He continued this work well into 2013.

In addition to his high intellect, Laurie demonstrated great modesty, a quietly unassuming but warm nature, a very strong social conscience, and a deep willingness to engage in collaborative endeavours. At St Vincent’s he made his laboratory and his expertise readily available for a very effective research collaboration with the Department of Gastroenterology which spanned over twenty years. Over these years, Laurie’s laboratory provided the first research training for several people who are now internationally well-known gastroenterologists. In addition, Laurie built a strong department that served the hospital very effectively and attracted many postgraduate science students who have gone

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on to make a mark nationally and internationally. The level of respect and affection which his past staff and research students felt for Laurie was very evident when many travelled long distances to attend an impromptu reunion to honour him a few weeks before he died. St Vincent’s Hospital was very fortunate to have such a fine man on its staff.

Contributed by Dr Kerry Breen who as Director of the Gastroenterology Department at St Vincent's from 1978- 1993 was a close colleague and good friend of Dr Mashford.

Association website - reminder

Our new website was launched in October 2013 and can be visited at http://stvincentsmedicalalumni.org.au/ There you will find notices of all forthcoming events, information about the association and past issues of this e-newsletter.

From the Archives Department – 50 years ago

The life of an intern in the mid-1960s

Prior to the arrival of the new Medical Practitioners Act in 1970, there was no compulsory preregistration year. It was possible to go straight into medical practice and some new graduates did GP locums between graduating in December and starting work at St Vincent’s in early January. Very occasionally new graduates went into general medical practice without any hospital experience. New graduates in our public hospitals were employed as junior resident medical officers (JRMOs). The word “intern” was an Americanism then.

The term RMO genuinely meant resident, as first and second year graduates (JRMOs and Senior RMOs) were required to live in the hospital for all 52 weeks of the year. RMOs were allowed “out” from 6.00 pm until midnight on two nights per week, and on every second weekend could stay “out” overnight on Saturday night, but had to return to be on call for their own patients by midnight on Sunday. (There were no night residents in those days.) Late in 1965, the residency requirements were relaxed slightly when JRMOs were allowed to stay out overnight on their nights off. This was the beginning of the end of the resident medical officer era.

JRMOs were paid approximately ₤20 per week but were provided free board, meals and laundry. JRMOs were mostly men and the men lived in RMO quarters above the “boiler house”, a building which was eventually demolished in 1993 to make way for the new hospital. The few women JRMOs and women SRMOs lived in one of a row of two-storey houses in Princes Street.

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Houses in Princes Street, 1966* RMO quarters, over boiler house*

Two of these houses in Princes Street accommodated the clinical school and another was home to six male SRMOs. The row of houses was demolished in the 1970’s to make way for the Bolte Rehabilitation wing. Above the boiler house, the male RMO quarters had twenty small bedrooms, a large common room, a smaller lounge room and a kitchen, as well as an outdoor balcony which overlooked Princes Street and faced the convent building (imploded in 1993 to make way for the Inpatient Services Building).

Princes Street in the 1960s, looking north; convent on the left Implosion of the convent in 1993 to make way for the new and RMO quarters at the far corner on the right* hospital*

The balcony was only used for parties; a popular pastime was to buy fireworks (yes, legal then) and during a party, attempt to fire skyrockets into open windows in the convent. The RMO quarters were maintained by Mimi and Robert who also took a great interest in the well-being of these novice doctors.

Induction and orientation of new JRMOs was very brief. We were addressed by Dr Bill Keane, (Medical Superintendent from 1947 until 1994) in the board room for an hour or so on a Friday afternoon early in January and then went off to be taught how to cross-match blood (which was an after-hours responsibility of JRMOs). At 6:00 pm, the previous year’s JRMOs left for their three weeks of annual leave and the new crew took over. At 6:30 pm, while dining with fellow JRMOs in the doctors’ dining room, the writer “received” an urgent page – that is, he saw that his allocated number 147 was flashing on a board in the dining room and he phoned the switchboard, to be told he was needed urgently in St Paul’s ward. A patient with hepatic encephalopathy had fallen out of

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bed and was now deeply unconscious (what happened after that, and the JRMO’s contribution to the outcome, can be left to the reader’s imagination!).

The pace of medical life and the organisation of the hospital were very different. Most adult patients were admitted under one of the six general medical units or the six general surgical units. The senior medical consultant staffs of each unit were unpaid honorary appointees, in a system that persisted until 1976. Each unit had a registrar and a JRMO. JRMO rotations of three months were spent in a general medical unit, a general surgical unit, the Casualty Department and a fourth rotation hotch-potch of medical and surgical specialities including paediatrics, dermatology, ophthalmology, anaesthetics and psychiatry. There were no specialist medical units with beds apart from neurology. The surgical specialties of orthopaedics, urology, gynaecology, thoracic surgery and neurosurgery did have beds; SRMOs worked in these units. The only full time salaried senior medical staffs were the Medical Superintendent, two pathologists and a radiologist. Every ward (and there were at least twenty) was supervised by a Sister of Charity with nursing qualifications; those nuns worked extremely long hours. JRMOs felt well supported by their registrars, honorary medical staff and most of all by nursing staff.

JRMO workloads fluctuated considerably, dependent upon the balance of elective and urgent admissions and the nature of the current rotation, but were nowhere near as demanding as in current times. Discharge summaries, initially hand written but dictated when RMOs showed they were capable of writing an acceptable summary, were dealt with in the evenings when on call. The typed version left the hospital days, weeks and sometimes months later, much to the chagrin of the lady in charge of Medical Records, Miss Binns. Patient numbers were high but the length of stay was long, averaging 14 days in 1966. Patients thought to have bled from a gastric ulcer ( a diagnosis based on barium radiography, as fibreoptic endoscopy only began at St Vincent’s in 1969) were kept in bed for six weeks to ensure ulcer healing, while patients who had had a myocardial infarct were prescribed strict bed rest for three weeks. A three bed coronary care unit was opened in 1967.

After 6:00 pm each evening and at the weekends, the Casualty Department was staffed only by JRMOs and an SRMO (who was also “Admitting Officer”) as well as several experienced nurses. At night there were only two fully trained nurses (“Night Supers”) on duty to supervise the care of 500 plus inpatients, care that was being provided by JRMOs and trainee nurses with one, two or three years of practical training. The Night Supers in the 1960s were Ms Nellie Matthews and Mr John Hudson, who were extremely capable but could put the fear of God into trainee nurses and JRMOs alike. Like the RMOs, the trainee nurses also lived in the hospital. The nurses lived in what is now the Aikenhead wing. Entry to that building by RMOs was forbidden!

On the three evenings per week that each RMO was rostered on, he or she was expected to meet with anxious relatives in the foyer of the main entrance when visiting hours - strictly 6.00 pm -8.00 pm - ended. Finding which relatives were “yours” was the first challenge. As this was the only contact most relatives had with any doctor responsible for their family member, the stakes were high and the learning curve was rapid. All discussions took place with everyone standing in an area crowded with multiple RMOs and the relatives of other patients milling impatiently to talk to “the doctor”.

Prior to 1966, Victorian hotels closed at 6:00 pm, a law that created the “6:00 swill”. RMOs who were off for the evening from 6:00, and who wanted to have a couple of beers, needed to get to the

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Eastern Hill Hotel on the corner of Victoria Parade and Brunswick Street ahead of closing time. It was a strict rule that if an RMO was on duty he must be contactable by the switchboard staff. This was dealt with quite simply. The hotel was renamed St Augustine’s (all wards then were named after saints) and when heading to the pub, one phoned the switchboard to say that you could now be found in St Augustine’s.

Living in the hospital on a continuous basis meant that the RMO’s club needed to create a social life for residents, based primarily on the RMO quarters. Women, other than women RMOs, were not permitted to enter those quarters other than to attend parties and any party had to be approved in advance by Mother Rectress. Nevertheless successful parties were regularly held. The most memorable involved the attendance of English cricketers in Melbourne for the Ashes series in the summers of 62/63 and 65/66. In that era, a rest day was called part way through a test match and touring cricketers were free to accept invitations to parties on the eve of the rest day. The English team stayed at the Windsor Hotel, just a short walk away. Your writer was still a student and did not attend the RMO party early in 1963. The highlight of that party occurred when someone dropped a cigarette butt in a box of fireworks! All hell broke loose! Luckily nobody was injured and the incident escaped media attention. The party in February 1966 took place part way through the fifth test match. The highlight of that party was the victory of the RMO team in the first heat of two “boat races”! (For those unfamiliar with such a competition, you will find it in Wikipedia.)

In addition to parties, RMOs arranged “dine in nights” (formal dinners with an invited speaker), participated in inter-hospital football, arranged a car rally and continued the tradition of the Christmas ward round. The car rally in 1965 was marked by an RMO rolling his father’s car; luckily neither he nor his navigator for the day, a St V’s nurse, were injured. For the Christmas ward round, costumes were borrowed from JC Williamson’s theatre company whose storage facility in Fitzroy Street now houses the hospital’s maintenance department. RMO coverage for the ten days over the Christmas- New Year period was arranged so that everyone worked five days on and had five days off. This allowed half of the RMO staff to fully participate in the Christmas ward round. Dr Keane’s secretary kindly typed several popular Christmas carols and made roneoed copies for us (for younger readers, a “roneo” device preceded photocopying). We set off on a round of all twenty wards at 8:00 am with beer in a linen trolley and finished at around midday (with Santa Claus in the linen trolley) in the old Casualty courtyard where the fire brigade had come to entertain patients from the children’s wards. A year of residency was almost at an end.

(* Photographs kindly provided by the Archives Department.)

The writer, who prefers to remain anonymous, was a JRMO and Social Secretary of the RMO’s Club in 1965.

About the Archives Department

The archives are open by appointment to St Vincent’s staff, bonafide researchers and interested members of the public and is delighted to receive alumni as visitors. To arrange a visit email archivist Barbara.Cytowicz@svhm.org.au or phone her on (03) 9288 3040, letting her know any particular topics or years of interest to you so she can tailor material brought out for you accordingly.

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The archives department is usually open Wednesday – Friday.

News from St Vincent’s Hospital

In past editions, we have arbitrarily extracted some news items from the St Vincent’s Hospital monthly newsletter known as The Font. To give the reader complete access to this news source, the hospital has provided the following link: http://www.svhm.org.au/aboutus/newspublications/pages/theFont.aspx. Just click on the link and you will be taken to recent issues of The Font.

News from the St Vincent’s Foundation

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