Our Hospital: Greenslopes Private Hospital History - 1945

Hospital History

1945

POWs RETURN

By February 1945, construction of the administration building had begun. Three new permanent wards increased the hospitals capacity to 600 patients. Other work included additions to the boiler house, a new laundry block, minor ancillary buildings, and additional roads and services.

Among the returning Australians were ex-POWs who had survived atrocious conditions in slave labour camps, including those on the Burma railway and in Japanese coal mines. They were emaciated shadows of the healthy people who had left Australia a few years before.

An army sergeant, also a patient at Greenslopes, recalls a despondent young ex-POW telling him: I must be in pretty bad nick. My parents didn't know me. They said G'day to me in the corridor and kept walking.

Medical and surgical advances kept Greenslopes at the forefront of treatment methods. Services were extended to include facio/cranial and plastic surgery, new amputation methods, and new treatments for gunshot wounds. A blood bank was also established at Greenslopes.