Growth

View from the window #2.
The first of these Monday morning photos was on 01 August. A week later, I chose to blip a different photo, and last week we were in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney.
I've entitled this photo "Growth" because in the right foreground the steel framework is rising for a new building on the North Shore Hospital site. In a former role for this DHB (which I left in 2008) I was a strong advocate for an education centre for all the staff. I (and some of my senior colleagues) argued for the value of this, and suggested that funds could be obtained in a number of ways. At some stage after I left, one of those colleagues was eventually able to persuade the Board that this was a necessary development, and in part that was due to a commitment by many of the senior doctors to donate some of the CME allocation to the purchase of equipment for such a learning centre. Two years ago when I was doing a locum in Liaison Psychiatry in the hospital, I learned from him that the funding proposal was to go to the Ministry in Wellington. Next I heard that the Ministry could only approve such funding to a certain level beyond which it would go to Cabinet. And the current Government doesn't approve of such expenditure. So the proposal was cut in half, the link with the Medical School was scrapped and the Ministry approved a much reduced project. Which is being funded almost totally by local donations. Such is politics in NZ, at least in the Health sector.