REMEMBER WHEN

GOLD COAST BULLETIN Friday October 27, 1972

A 20-YEAR-OLD nurse learned she had been sacked from the Southport Hospital, shook her head in disbelief and told the Bulletin, “I don’t know why, I have never seen any babies being injured.”

Her mother said: “The things they say have happened at the hospital would be completely against my daughter’s nature, she’s a devoted nurse.”

The nurse’s dismissal was announced at the same time as a claim the hospital’s injured baby toll had risen to seven.

The Gold Coast Hospital Board’s chairman, Mr Rutherford, SM said after giving full consideration to the reports of the injuries to babies the board was of the opinion that an employee was guilty of improper conduct.

“Being of that opinion the board terminates the services of the employee,” he said.

Bulletin reporter Frank Hampson broke the story and met the nurse and her mother soon after in a “trim-looking, white weatherboard house” in Southport.

She was visibly shocked when she put down the phone but it was her mother who spoke to the Bulletin.

“They’re killing a lifetime’s ambition,” she said. “My daughter was in hospital with pneumonia when she was 12 months old and when she was two. She got used to nurses and from then on she always wanted to be a nurse.”

Meanwhile, Queensland Governor Sir Colin Hannah opened the $93,731 Senior Citizens Centre at Labrador which continues to operate today. Two-thirds of the cost was subsidised by the state and federal governments with the rest raised by community effort.