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Botany and Ormiston Times, Thursday, October 13, 2016 — 9
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Dr John Malcomson
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medicine
Time to hang up stethoscope D
r John Malcomson has tended to thousands of patients over four decades, has delivered babies who became patients and was general practitioner to four generations in a handful of Howick families. After 40 years as a GP in Howick, last month he left his practice for the last time. The first order of business? A muchanticipated holiday in Europe with his wife Cris. He estimates he has seen more than 10,000 different people over the years. Serendipity, in no small part, ensured the couple who came from the UK for a year-long adventure, stayed on a little longer. That was in 1974. Everything since, Dr Malcomson (69) said, is a bit of blur. It helped immensely in those early days that Cris was a nurse – “a typical Shortland Street arrangement” as he puts it. Cris is a Kiwi (her great grandfather Len - she thinks Adams was a drummer boy in the Maori Wars). “She was doing her nursing OE when we met in Sussex,” he said. “She brought me to New Zealand for a year and somehow or other we got stuck.” Fresh from Birmingham, and yet to start their family, they found work relatively easily as they were able to pitch for locum medical positions as a doctor/ nurse team. For a couple of years that took them to Riverton, 30km west of Invercargill, and to the Hauraki Gulf, experiences he now deems “very educational”. “I’d seen things on Waiheke Island I’d only read in text books,” he said. “I was a young, green grad in a new country.” He recalls setting up practice in Picton Street, below the bus company in Crawford House, now a reserve. How he got there falls to timing. Cris’s father Gordon Menzies was an accountant for Drs Keith Simcock, Trevor Young and John
Betteridge and he introduced the young Englishman to them. “Keith Simcock took me under his wing and organised a series of locums in the area for me and that’s how we came to know Howick,” he said. Dr Simcock died a few years ago. Doctors Young and Betteridge still practise and remain friends. Starting at the practice, where he joined Dr Mike Cooper, came at nerve-wracking time. Just a few days later daughter Penny (now Peskett) was born. He visited Dr Cooper, 88, at a retirement village in Glendowie before heading overseas. Four decades has brought with it innumerable memories. For some six years he delivered babies at the Howick Maternity Hospital, located in the same building as Gulf Views Rest Home in Selwyn Road. “I think I was still looking after one or two of those babies when I retired,” he said. The surgery has always been busy. “My list size would have been around 1200-1400 over the years,” Dr Malcomson said. “People come and go; they are born and they pass away.” Their practice was initially at 12 Picton Street, below the Crawford Reserve, where the bus company once was. “When (Dr) Jack (Lin) and I moved to Fencible Drive six months ago we leased the building to Crawford House and they’ve had their signage on it for several months. They needed the extra space.” The obvious differences in medical practice revolve around more sophisticated technology. In the early days, his wife would field the calls and if she needed to contact him on his rounds would phone a patient’s home. “It worked because it had to,” he said. “Mobile phones make it easier to keep in touch with people, computers have enabled us to keep much more sophisticated medical records, medical imaging, laboratory tests and so on are much better than when I first graduated,” he said.
“I remember the first ultrasound scanner arriving at the maternity teaching hospital in my final year. The experts could see a baby. All I could see was snow. Now we can tell the gender of a baby from a very early stage.” One thing that has stayed the same since the days of Hippocrates and will never change is that patients are individuals with their own personalities, hopes, aspirations and fears, he said. “This is what makes medicine, particularly general practice, tick. It makes the job challenging, frightening, exasperating, interesting, stimulating, heartwarming and professionally rewarding all at the same time.” The memories are many. “My wife Cris worked with me for 18 years in Howick as our practice nurse. She retired two years ago to help our daughter with our grandchildren,” he said. “We’ve always enjoyed working together and managed to separate our working from our domestic lives.” (Daughter Penny, in Howick, has three children and son Ian, in London, has two). He will miss the collegiality and the daily buzz of work and intends keeping up those friendships. “It goes without saying that I have enjoyed a very happy professional life with Jack Lin and our dedicated professional, nursing, managerial and reception staff. I know I’ve left behind an excellent team in good heart.” Part of his legacy will be setting up East Care and the East Health PHO 28 years ago with a cohort of doctors - who are good friends to this day – Dr Henry Doerr, Dr Betteridge, Dr Young, Dr Bruce Kidd and Dr Graeme Kidd among others. “I’m really pleased with that. We started off as amateurs and became professional medical directors.” Apart from travelling, he wishes to do more tramping, cycling, amateur photography and astronomy. And there are the grandchildren.
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